Orpheus Lost

In this compelling reimagining of the Orpheus myth, Leela, a young mathematician, encounters gifted Australian musician Mishka performing in the subway. The connection is immediate; a steamy love affair ensues. Insulated by their love, the pair ignores the anxious urban landscape. But when Leela is picked up off the street and taken to an interrogation center and an explosion rocks the subway, the fabric of their bond—and their very identities—begins to unravel. Reading group guide included.

"Janette Turner Hospital is writing fiction that is literary in quality and formal design and in the ambition it displays but will also keep you on the edge of your chair or reading past your bedtime. . . . Turner Hospital has a beautiful lightness of touch through the nightmare contortions of the plot she spins and twists like a rope of destiny. . . . Orpheus Lost is one of those crossover books that . . . should enthral every kind of reader; a book full of intelligence and drama and compassion that is also a captivating page-turner-effortlessly sophisticated and proudly parochial at the same time." -"The Age "(Melbourne)[an error occurred while processing this directive] "Turner Hospital has become such a master of the drama of fiction [and] has managed to engage with the terrible matter of terrorism in a way that is not only serious but, in the narrative sense, engrossing. . . . The most striking thing about Turner Hospital is that she is writing literary fiction that has the readability and the page-turning suspense normally associated with popular or trash writing. . . . [She] is, like [Graham] Greene and [Joyce Carol] Oates, a serious artist who is also a master of popular form and its transfigurations." -"Australian Literary Review""Hospital shows her dazzling skill at thriller writing. [She is] a master-planner who never falters for an instant. Nor do the pace and intensity let up. . . . [A] consummate, nail-biting example of a myth retold for modern times." -"Australian Book Review" "It must be a great challenge for an author to take a Greek myth and rewrite it in a modern context. It must be doubly satisfying, therefore, when the finished story is asgood as Janette Turner Hospital's latest book Orpheus Lost. . . . Spellbinding . . . shows considerable skill." "-Bookseller and Publisher "(Australia) "One of the most powerful and innovative writers in English today."--("The Times Literary Supplement") "Parts of this story are meditative, even elegiac, close-ups of the characters. But here and there the narrative pace quickens, and the second half, where the action leaps across continents, sometimes has the feel of a thriller." - "Winnipeg Free Press" Praise for Janette Turner Hospital and "Due Preparations for the Plague": "Move over Twain, DeLillo and Franzen. Janette Turner Hospital remakes the American social novel. Thrilling, maddening, deeply moral . . . a near flawless novel, and one so timely it is breathtaking." --"The Globe and Mail" "Hospital masterfully raises the big questions in a compelling . . . mesmerizing manner, drawing in the reader to a riveting degree." --"San Diego Tribune " "From the Hardcover edition."

Janette Turner Hospital received Australia's Patrick White Award for lifetime literary achievement, and is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of South Carolina. She lives in Columbia, South Carolina.