Pandora’s Jar by Natalie Haynes

In traditional retellings of the Greek myths, the focus is invariably on gods and men, but in Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths, Natalie Haynes refocuses our gaze on the remarkable women at the centre of these ancient stories.

‘Beyoncé, Star Trek, Ray Harryhausen ... the most enjoyable book about Greek myths you will ever read, absolutely brimming with subversive enthusiasm.’  Mark Haddon

‘Natalie Haynes is beyond brilliant. Pandora’s Jar is a treasure box of classical delights. Never has ancient misogyny been presented with so much wit and style.’ Amanda Foreman

‘Witty, erudite and subversive, this takes the women of Greek myth—the women who are sidelined, vilified, misunderstood or ignored—and puts them centre stage.’ Samantha Ellis

‘Reading Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths by Natalie Haynes: Funny, sharp explications of what these sometimes not-very-nice women were up to, and how they sometimes made idiots of... but read on!’ Margaret Atwood, on Twitter

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Pandora’s Jar
Women in the Greek Myths
By Natalie Haynes
Picador / hardback / 1st October 2020 / £20

Stories of gods and monsters are the mainstay of epic poetry and Greek tragedy, from Homer to Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, from Jason and the Argonauts to the wars of Troy. Today, a wealth of novels, plays and films draw their inspiration from stories first told almost three thousand years ago. But modern tellers of Greek myth have usually been men and have rarely shown interest in telling women’s stories. And when they do, those women are often painted as monstrous, vengeful or just plain evil. But Pandora – the first woman, who according to legend unloosed chaos upon the world – was not a villain to the Greeks, Helen didn’t always start a war, and even Medea and Phaedra have vastly more nuanced stories than generations of retellings might indicate. 

Now, in Pandora’s Jar, Natalie Haynes – broadcaster, writer and passionate classicist – redresses this imbalance. Taking Pandora and her jar (the box was a mistranslation by Erasmus) as the starting point, she puts the women of the Greek myths on equal footing with the menfolk. After millennia of stories telling of gods and men, be they Zeus, Odysseus or Oedipus, the voices that sing from these pages are those of Clytemnestra, Jocasta, Eurydice and Penelope.

'Natalie Haynes is the nation's great muse' Adam Rutherford

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ABOUT NATALIE HAYNES

Natalie Haynes is the author of five books. A Thousand Ships, was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020. Her earlier books include: The Children of Jocasta (2017), The Amber Fury (2014), and The Ancient Guide to Modern Life (2010). She has written and recorded six series of Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics for BBC Radio 4. Natalie has written for The Times, The Independent, The Guardian and The Observer. 

@officialnhaynes / https://nataliehaynes.com/ 
https://www.facebook.com/watch/nataliehaynesstandupclassicist/1649832641846815/

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SELECTED PRAISE FOR A Thousand Ships

‘With her trademark passion, wit, and fierce feminism, Natalie Haynes gives much-needed voice to the silenced women of the Trojan War. Her thoughtful portraits will linger with you long after the book is finished’ - Madeline Miller, author of Circe 

'A gripping feminist masterpiece' Deborah Frances-White ‘The forgotten women are vividly brought to life in this moving, intelligent and witty book.’ - Martha Kearney, BBC Radio 4 

‘Here, in this treat of a book, the women take centre stage - and how brilliantly . . . Natalie Haynes brings them to witty, lyrical, scintillating life . . . A book to both savour and devour.’ - Suzannah Lipscomb 

‘Breathtaking . . . Her writing isn’t merely clever, or elegant, or (at times) extremely funny - though it is all of those things. It’s also viscerally vivid.’ - Catherine Nixey 

‘Haynes is master of her trade, crafting perfect sentences and believable characters who speak and think in delicately nuanced language. [She] succeeds in breathing warm life into some of our oldest stories to show how remarkably little basic human relationships and emotions have changed’ - Daily Telegraph  

’Absorbing and fiercely feminist.’ - Guardian

The Long Forgotten by David Whitehouse

“Outlandishly clever, ingenious . . . There’s no question that David Whitehouse is a writer to watch.”

— Janet Maslin, New York Times

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Picador / hardback - £14.99 / fiction / 22 March ‘18 / Ebook - £12.99

‘Dove is walking to work along the canal when he remembers the bog violet. It just appears, however memories do, a glimmer of the past shining through the now…Dove knows nothing of flowers. And there are few of his age (if his age is thirty, which he thinks it is) who know what he now knows of the bog violet; that’s how vivid his memory is…The memory is as lucid as his reflection, stilling on the black glass of the canal. But where has he seen it before, and why is he recalling it now?’

When the black box flight recorder of a plane that went missing 30 years ago is found at the bottom of the sea, a young man named Dove begins to remember a past that isn't his. The memories belong to a rare flower hunter in 1980s New York, whose search led him around the world and ended in tragedy.

Restless and lonely in present-day London, Dove is quickly consumed by the memories, which might just hold the key to the mystery of his own identity and what happened to the passengers on that doomed flight, The Long Forgotten…

‘A great read and a touching and funny exploration of the true meaning of family’ - S J Watson, author of Before I Go To Sleep, on Mobile Library

‘A great, tender-hearted story about stories. It’s a book about what books can give us, and how they can add to our adventure – or even take us on one. A lovely read’ - Matt Haig, author of The Humans, on Mobile Library

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About David Whitehouse

David Whitehouse is an award-winning novelist, journalist and screenwriter. His first novel, Bed, won the 2012 Betty Trask Award and his second novel, Mobile Library, won the 2015 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. Originally from Warwickshire, he now lives in Margate with his family.

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The Killing of Butterfly Joe by Rhidian Brook

Hurtling across 1980s America, this wildly original story is full of characters you’ll never forget...The Killing of Butterfly Joe is the dazzling new novel from the award-winning, bestselling author of The Aftermath (soon to be a major movie). 

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The Killing of Butterfly Joe by Rhidian Brook
Picador / hardback & Ebook / fiction / 8 March 2018 / £14.99

‘I killed Joe once, in a manner of speaking. But not twice. Not in the way you mean.’

Young Welshman, Llew Jones, wants to see America, have an experience and write about it. After an encounter with the charismatic, illusive, infuriating ‘Butterfly Joe’ and his freakish family, he gets his wish. He’s soon hurtling across 1980’s America, having an adventure whilst hoping to pull-off a life-changing deal. But it’s a road that leads to trouble and sees Llew thrown in jail. Now he has to give his side of the story if he’s ever going to get free.

Part neo-gothic thriller, part existential road trip, part morality tale, The Killing of Butterfly Joe is a wildly original story full of characters you’ll never forget. An epic tale of friendship, desire and the search for freedom and self-definition. It’s about participating in the Great American Dream – ‘the one that takes you from rags to riches via pitches’ – whatever the consequences. 

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About the author

Rhidian Brook is an award-winning writer of fiction, television drama and film. His first novel, The Testimony of Taliesin Jones, won several prizes including the Somerset Maugham Award. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications, including the Paris Review and have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. He is also a regular contributor to 'Thought For The Day'. His 2013 novel, The Aftermath, was translated into more than twenty languages and has been made into a movie, staring Keira Knightley, that is set for release in 2018. He once had a job selling butterflies in glass cases.

@RhidianBrook #TheKillingofButterflyJoe

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‘Superb…. masterly.’ - Mail on Sunday, on The Aftermarth

‘Profoundly moving, beautifully written.’ – Independent, on The Aftermath

‘Superb.’ – Guardian, on The Aftermath

‘Terrific. … Richly atmospheric.’ - Sunday Telegraph, on The Aftermath

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American War by Omar El Akkad

“‘American War’ creates as haunting a post-apocalyptic universe as Cormac McCarthy did in ‘The Road’, and as devastating a look at the fallout that national events have on an American family as Philip Roth did in ‘The Plot Against America’...El Akkad has written a novel that not only maps the harrowing effects of violence on one woman and her family, but also becomes a disturbing parable about the ruinous consequences of war on ordinary civilians.”

— Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

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Hardback fiction / 7th September 2017 / £14.99 / 9781509852192

An audacious and powerful debut novel: a second American Civil War, a devastating plague, and one family caught deep in the middle – a story that asks what might happen if America were to turn its most devastating policies and deadly weapons upon itself.

Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, that unmanned drones fill the sky. And when her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she quickly begins to be shaped by her particular time and place until, finally, through the influence of a mysterious functionary, she is turned into a deadly instrument of war. Telling her story is her nephew, Benjamin Chestnut, born during war – part of the Miraculous Generation – now an old man confronting the dark secret of his past, his family’s role in the conflict and, in particular, that of his aunt, a woman who saved his life while destroying untold others

Omar El Akkad is an award-winning journalist and author who has travelled around the world to cover many of the most important news stories of the last decade. His reporting includes dispatches from the NATO-led war in Afghanistan, the military trials at Guantanamo Bay, the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt and the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson, Missouri. He is a recipient of a National Newspaper Award for investigative reporting and the Goff Penny Memorial Prize for Young Journalists, as well as three National Magazine Award honorable mentions. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

More information: Omarelakkad.com / facebook.com/omar.akkad / twitter.com/omarelakkad

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Selected international praise

‘Whether read as a cautionary tale of partisanship run amok, an allegory of past conflicts or a study of the psychology of war, American War is a deeply unsettling novel. The only comfort the story offers is that it’s a work of fiction. For the time being, anyway.’  Justin Cronin, The New York Times

‘El Akkad’s formidable talent is to offer up a stinging rebuke of the distance with which the United States sometimes views current disasters, which are always happening somewhere else. Not this time.’ LA Times

‘Follow the tributaries of today’s political combat a few decades into the future and you might arrive at something as terrifying as Omar El Akkad’s debut novel, American War . . . El Akkad demonstrates a profound understanding of the corrosive culture of civil war.’ The Washington Post

‘A gripping plot and an elegiac narrative tone.’ Boston Globe

‘El Akkad’s debut novel transports us to a terrifyingly plausible future... Part family chronicle, part apocalyptic fable, American War is a vivid narrative of a country collapsing in on itself, where political loyalties hardly matter given the ferocity of both sides and the unrelenting violence that swallows whole bloodlines and erodes any capacity for mercy or reason. This is a very dark read; El Akkad creates a world all too familiar in its grisly realism’ Publishers Weekly

‘El Akkad has created a brilliantly well-crafted, profoundly shattering saga of one family’s suffering…American War is a gripping, unsparing, and essential novel for dangerously contentious times.’ Booklist

‘El Akkad’s astounding, gripping and eerily believable novel . . . masterful. Both the story and the writing are lucid, succinct, powerful and persuasive.’ Toronto The Globe and Mail

‘A dystopian vision . . . cannily imagined . . . But above all, El Akkad’s novel is an allegory about present-day military occupation’ Kirkus Reviews

 ‘A plausible, terrifying chronicle of the fracture and subsequent annihilation of the US… A thrillingly complex adventure that moves from the American south to Alaska and on to the Middle East and North Africa… At its heart and most movingly, the novel also becomes a coming-of-age narrative about how easily a curious child faced with horror and powerlessness can transform into a weapon intent on obliteration. As we learn at the end of the prologue, “This isn’t a story about war. It’s about ruin”’ The Australian

'The book that I found the most haunting this year. . . The premise is harrowing, the prose is stark and beautiful, the plotting is impeccable, and there’s something utterly heartbreaking in El Akkad’s subtle rendition of the ways in which war shapes the human soul.' Emily St John Mandel in The Millions

‘American War is a thought experiment in the form of a dystopian novel . . . The dramatic narrative takes us through the key events in Sarat’s life, while intercutting excerpts from various documentary sources that give us background and insight into the bigger political picture. A detailed world is constructed . . . American War asks us to imagine the uncomfortable.’ The Toronto Star

‘Omar El Akkad’s urgent debut transmutes our society’s current dysfunction into a terrifying yet eerily recognizable future, where contemporary global and local conflicts have wreaked havoc on American soil. The threads between today and that future are his masterfully shaped characters. Their resilience, savagery, and humanity serve both as a portrait of who we are but also what we might very well become.’ Elliot Ackerman, author of Dark at the Crossing

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