The Penelopiad — Margaret Atwood
Short, furious, and the maids finally speak.
The Odyssey has a body count nobody mourns. The hanging of the maids is a murder the hero's story files under housekeeping.
You want it sharp and short: the wife narrating from the underworld, and the maids who never got justice finally speaking.
What it keeps and what it changes
Keeps: the homecoming’s facts.
Changes: who narrates: Penelope from Hades, and the twelve hanged maids as a haunting Greek chorus.
Keeps the homecoming's facts. Changes who narrates. Penelope tells it from Hades, looking back, while the twelve hanged maids haunt the story as a Greek chorus, keeping the crime at its center.
Whose story is it?
Penelope’s and the maids’.
The feminism angle: Central and furious. Atwood indicts the poem's treatment of the enslaved women directly.
How much time does it ask?
≈3.5 hr read (a novella).
The maids’ recurring chorus, returning to the crime the epic would rather forget.
Where to find it
Other ways to get it: Ebook — Kobo ↗ · Kindle — Amazon ↗ · Audiobook — Libro.fm ↗
Borrow it free: Borrow on Libby ↗ · Find at your library — WorldCat ↗
Pairs well with: The Return (2024), if you want a chaser in another medium.
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More ways home: The Emily Wilson Translation (2017) · The Robert Fagles Translation (1996) · The Robert Fitzgerald Translation (1961)