Synopses & Reviews
The story of Atlas and Heracles.
Atlas knows how it feels to carry the weight of the world; but why, he asks himself, does it have to be carried at all? In Weight visionary and inventive, yet completely believable and relevant to the questions we ask ourselves every day Winterson's skill in turning the familiar on its head to show us a different truth is put to stunning effect.
"When I was asked to choose a myth to write about, I realized I had chosen already. The story of Atlas holding up the world was in my mind before the telephone call had ended. If the call had not come, perhaps I would never have written the story, but when the call did come, that story was waiting to be written. Rewritten. The recurring language motif of Weight is I want to tell the story again.
My work is full of Cover Versions. I like to take stories we think we know and record them differently. In the retelling comes a new emphasis or bias, and the new arrangement of the key elements demands that fresh material be injected into the existing text.
Weight moves far away from the simple story of Atlas's punishment and his temporary relief when Hercules takes the world off his shoulders. I wanted to explore loneliness, isolation, responsibility, burden, and freedom too, because my version has a very particular end not found elsewhere." from Jeanette Winterson's Foreword to Weight
Review
"Weight is a masterpiece. As one of the inaugural volumes of the innovative Canongate myths series, it rewrites and reconfirms what fiction is, was, and might become." Scotland On Sunday
Review
"Winterson's embrace of the mythic landscape is evident in her rich imagery....In Winterson's telling, this absurdly unlikely image is so right, so cathartic, that one can well imagine the old myth having waited for this element to complete it." Caroline Alexander, New York Times Book Review
Review
"Winterson focuses on Atlas's bamboozlement by Heracles...with promiscuous wit and exuberant fantasy....[Winterson] produces some exquisitely filmic prose that is almost mythopoetic." The Independant (U.K.)
Review
"[A] touching meditation on the difficult journey to self-knowledge, and also extremely funny, communicating verve and wit." The Guardian (U.K.)
Review
"Inspired by a Titan, she begins appropriately on a titanic scale, writing about the heavens and the earth, and astronomy and geology and bringing her musings home to the human scale." The Sunday Times (U.K.)
Synopsis
The author of Oranges are Not the Only Fruit and The Passion: Written on the Body rewrites the myth of Atlas and Hercules, finding new meaning in this ancient tale. Reprint.
Synopsis
With wit and verve, the prize-winning author of Sexing the Cherry and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit brings the mythical figure of Atlas into the space age and sets him free at last. In her retelling of the story of a god tricked into holding the world on his shoulders and his brief reprieve, she sets difficult questions about the nature of choice and coercion, how we choose our own destiny and at the same time can liberate ourselves from our seeming fate. Finally in paperback, Weight is a daring, seductive addition to Canongates ambitious series of myths by the worlds most acclaimed authors.
About the Author
Jeanette Winterson's novels explore the boundaries of physicality and the imagination, gender polarities, and sexual identities, and have won several literary awards. Her stage adaptation of The Powerbook in 2002 opened at the Royal National Theatre, London. She also opened a shop, Verde's, in East London to sell organic food. She received an OBE in the 2006 honours list.