Zachary Mason
[NOTE: AS OF MARCH 11, 2009, THIS TITLE IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE THROUGH STARCHERONE BOOKS.]
The Lost Books of the Odyssey
Winner of the 2006-7 Starcherone Fiction Prize
Finalist, 2009 Young Lions Award, for best work of fiction by a writer under the age of 35
Following the structure of the ancient Greek classic, The
Lost Books of the Odyssey features alternative episodes, fragments,
and revisions of Homer's original Odyssey and, equipped as well with a faux-authoritative
scholarly introduction, richly carries off the illusion of being the lost
ur-text of Homer's masterpiece. Justifying comparison with the great postmodern
fictive hoaxes of Jorge Luis Borges, Vladimir Nabokov, and Robert Coover,
this is a one-of-a-kind book destined to become a classic in its own right.
The Lost Books of the Odyssey was selected for
the Starcherone Fiction Prize by final judge Carole Maso in Starcherone Books's
4th annual blind-judged competition.
"Mason's book is incredibly impressive. Beautifully written, intelligent,
war-inflected in all the most ancient and contemporary ways, filled with all
kinds of pleasures. An ambitious feast!" Carole
Maso, author of Ava and The Art Lover
"A stirring revelation: Zachary Mason's astounding glosses of The
Odyssey plunge us into an unforeseeable and hypnotic dimension of fiction.
Of the three possible interpretations of the work that he proposes -- Homeric
stories anciently reproduced by recombining their components, a Theosophist
dream of abstract mathematics, and pure illusion (that is, it was all made
up by him) -- the result is one and the same. This enthralling book is his
doing, whether as translator, conjuror, or author. I vote for number three."
Harry Mathews, author of My Life in CIA
"That each story is all stories, that the tale foretells the teller's life,
that the poem kills its hero, that one word will suffice, that all times are
today, that everything changes, that nothing changes - from these riddles
Zachary Mason crafts his book. It encodes the astonishments others promised
to decipher, the secret of secrets, the last meaning. We feel its mysteries
within our grasp, just a page away. Even this is prefigured. This is the book
I always meant to write." R. M. Berry, author
of Frank and Leonardo's Horse
Zachary Mason is a computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence.
He got his B.S. at Harvey Mudd and his Ph.D. at Brandeis. He works for a
Silicon Valley start-up. In recent months he has had short stories accepted
by Pleiades and The Journal of Literary Imagination. This is his first novel.
He is currently working on another novel about the mythology and culture
of AI's.
ISBN 0-9788811-5-X. ISBN-13 978-0-9788811-5-3.
[Note: This edition is no longer available through Starcherone Books.]