Synopses & Reviews
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? And when you have eternity to ponder this question, the brief reprieve offered by Heracles the only man strong enough to borrow the burden can force you to demand an answer from the gods. But maybe the gods don't know the answer. Or maybe the right questions were never asked before...
It's time the story was retold.
With wit and verve, Jeanette Winterson brings Atlas into the space age, and sets him free at last. Simultaneously, she asks her own difficult questions about the nature of choice and coercion, and how we forge our own destiny. 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 and showing us a different truth is once more put to dazzling effect.
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 award-winning author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit turns her talents to the story of Atlas, whose job was to hold up the world a story of loneliness, isolation, responsibility, burden, and freedom.