Medusa: A beautiful and profound retelling of Medusa’s story

Product Information

Higgins’s own volume is illustrated by the Turner prize-winning Chris Ofili, whose drawings are charming and airy, suggestive in spirit of Matisse’s pencil sketches.

Today, the most well-known image of Medusa’s head belongs perhaps to the logo of the Italian fashion company, Versace. Photograph: Andrew Michael/Alamy ‘A vicious little thug’: Perseus with the head of Medusa, by Antonio Canova, Vatican City. According to Ovid, this is what first got her into trouble: when Medusa slept with Poseidon in a temple of Athena, Athena turned her hair into snakes as a punishment. If you thought the Greek gods had a monopoly on selfishness, rape, deception and other shady derring-do, you were wrong. In this fascinating reimagining of the myth of Medusa, author Jessie Burton presents us with a novel feminist twist to a character and story that has, for the most part, featured as one of Perseus’s heroic exploits.If you get trodden on by a giant or a god – which wouldn’t be intentional on our part, incidentally – but in the heat of battle one of us might step in the wrong place and there you’d be.

Medusa, in this version, is a lonely young girl , the victim of a horrific act of rape, exiled to a “half-life”, disfigured and insecure, fearful for her future, loved and protected by her sisters but seething with rage within. And discover that as alike as they are, they are set on a collision course that only one can survive.Initially, she suggests, it was the pictures that enthralled her – emphatic illustrations by Elisabeth Frink that exude dark solidity. I'm starting to think Perseus may have had Two Wives because of the confusion when Perseus met chained up Women about to be sacrificed to some sea creature due to their mother's offending some goddess. i've always been fascinated with medusa and how she's seen as a villain despite her backstory and this book added a lot to that. I’m sure this format is one that would entice younger readers to read (whether mythology or other stories).