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From snaky Echidna – half-nymph, half snake and mother of monsters – to the fearsome bull-headed Minotaur, the strange and terrible creatures of Greek myth have been grabbing our attention for thousands of years.
In Irresistible Monsters, bestselling author, broadcaster and passionate classicist Natalie Haynes turns her inimitable gaze on the inhuman, and reveals that even the things we thought we knew aren’t necessarily so: a Cyclops doesn’t always have one eye, Cerberus doesn’t start out with three heads and why might the Sphinx enjoy kidnapping handsome young men?
Along the way, she examines how we think about monsters: what makes a monster, and why do we need them? Why is the Chimera – hybrid of goat, snake and lion – a monster while Pegasus the winged horse is not? Was Scylla always sharp-toothed and dog-bellied? Do monsters subvert the world as we know it, or subtly reinforce our expectations? Is a monster human or animal, mortal or divine? And how do you defeat a multi-headed snake when it has a giant crab as its henchman?
Natalie Haynes
Natalie Haynes is a writer and broadcaster. She is the author of The Amber Fury, The Children of Jocasta, A Thousand Ships, which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2020 and Stone Blind. Her non-fiction book about women in Greek Myth, Pandora’s Jar, was a bestseller in both the UK and the US. She has written and performed twelve series of her BBC Radio 4 show, Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics. In 2015 she was awarded the Classical Association Prize for her work in bringing Classics to a wider audience.
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