Overview

'An extraordinary novel... Breathtaking in its scope andambition... An enthralling read' - Sunday Express When a mummy in the Museum of Albion is unpacked it is found to contain a bundle of curious objects and documents which tell of the wanderings of an unknown woman, Leto. On the run, in a far-off era of civil strife, Leto gives birth to twins, shelters with wolves, survives in a desert stronghold as the lover of its commander, stows away on a ship loaded with plundered antiquities and then works as a maid in a war-torn city. She loses her son but saves her daughter during a long siege. As the novel sweeps from mythological times and the Middle Ages to the treasure-hunting of Victorian Europe and into the present day, Leto reappears in different guises. Eventually she becomes a servant to a rock singer, and begins to search for her son.

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9780099284659

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Reviews

An extraordinary novel... breathtaking in its scope and ambition... An enthralling read. - Sunday Express <br> Driven by a mystery that keeps the reader guessing to the final pages... Beautifully written, the language rich and sensuous, with a seductive range of references... Tremendous fun. - Literary Review <br> Stimulating... vivid... a fascinating debate about the nature of mythology. - Financial Times <br> A compelling and erudite meditation on exiles, refugees, loss and the search for a home. A timely, ambitious and inventive novel, which blends a reflection on Europe's past and present traumas with rare story-telling verve. - Scotland on Sunday

Myths and fairy tales are crucial presences in Warner's cultural histories (No Go the Bogeyman, 1999, etc.) and novels like Indigo (1992), The Lost Father (1989), and her newest: an ambitious, intermittently chaotic reshaping of the classical tale of Leto. Raped by Zeus, pregnant with the twins Apollo and Artemis, and pursued by Zeus's vengeful consort Hera, Leto (a.k.a. Leda, among other incarnations) becomes the archetypal persecuted wanderer whose sufferings Warner portrays as the wronged woman assumes various subsequent identities identities: at the time of the Crusades, in Victorian England, then a fictionalized Balkan country ( Tirzah ) in the 1970s, unto the present day. Leto's plight attracts the contrasting interests of mousy museum-curator Hortense Fernly (entrusted with the bundle of manuscripts and art objects discovered in what seemed to be Leto's sarcophagus) and schoolteacher Kim McQuoy, a firebrand activist working on behalf of homeless people whenever he's not paralyzed by his obsession with William Blake-inspired pop-rocker Gramercy Poule. Warner doesn't make this mishmash work (who could?-possibly a feminist Pynchon), but her Bundle is alive with quirky inventions, and it's great fun watching her try and fail to pull it all together. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Marina Warner spent her early years in Cairo, and was educated at a convent in Berkshire, and then in Brussels and London, before studying modern languages at Oxford. She is an internationally acclaimed cultural historian, critic, novelist and short story writer. From her early books on the Virgin Mary and Joan of Arc, to her bestselling studies of fairy tales and folk stories, From the Beast to the Blonde and No Go the Bogeyman, her work has explored different figures in myth and fairy tale and the art and literature they have inspired. She lectures widely in Europe, the United States and the Middle East, and is currently Professor in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies, University of Essex. She was appointed CBE in 2008. www.marinawarner.com

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