Where Three Roads Meet
The Myth of Oedipus
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The author of The Cleaner of Chartres “brings Sigmund Freud together with a vivid, loquacious Tiresias for an intriguing retelling of the Oedipus myth” (Publishers Weekly).
In the latest retelling of the world’s greatest stories in the Myth series from Canongate, the highly regarded novelist Salley Vickers brings to life the Western world’s most widely known myth, Oedipus, through a shrewdly told exploration of the seminal story in conversation between Freud and Tiresias.
It is 1938 and Sigmund Freud, suffering from the debilitating effects of cancer, has been permitted by the Nazis to leave Vienna. He seeks refuge in England, taking up residence in the house in Hampstead in which he will die fifteen months later. But his last months are made vivid by the arrival of a stranger who comes and goes according to Freud’s state of health. Who is the mysterious visitor and why has he come to tell the famed proponent of the Oedipus complex his strangely familiar story?
Set partly in prewar London and partly in ancient Greece, Where Three Roads Meet is as brilliantly compelling as it is thoughtful. Former psychoanalyst and acclaimed novelist Salley Vickers “draws suspense and even new meaning from a foundational Western myth” (Publishers Weekly) and revisits a crime committed long ago that still has disturbing reverberations for us all today.
“Full of insight and humor, offering a glimpse into the workings of a great mind faced with the conundrum of human suffering.”—The Times
“A novelist in the great English tradition of moral seriousness.”—The Washington Post
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novelist and psychologist Vickers (The Other Side of You) brings Sigmund Freud together with a vivid, loquacious Tiresias for an intriguing retelling of the Oedipus myth. Trained as a priest at Delphi, but blinded after a run-in with a nude Goddess,Tiresias narrates his part in the world's mostfamous family tragedy to Freud, the myth's most ardent modern popularizer, as Freud recovers from oral surgery. Vickers's Freud is congenial and gregarious, eager to hear the stories told by his sporadic (and possible imagined) visitor, most importantly the story of the place where three roads came together, and Oedipus and his father had their fateful meeting. Vickers's spare chronicle draws suspense and even new meaning from a foundational Western myth.