Odysseus and Penelope. An Ordinary Marriage By Inge Merkel, Translated by Renate Latimer, Afterword by Gerd K. Schneider

In this profound and entertaining novel, Inge Merkel, the Viennese historian and classicist, intimates with irony, humor and a twinkle in her eyes why it took Odysseus twenty years to return to his wife and son. It is the old story of long-suffering resourceful Odysseus told from the point of view of clever Penelope. Odysseus and Penelope: An ordinary marriage! Merkel is interested less in the heroic epic than in the experiences of a woman whose husband abandons wife and infant to pursue adventures in the Trojan War. What Odysseus inflicts on Penelope is, according to Merkel, human, all too human. How does a wife wait for two decades for her husband, who feigns patriotic duty and plunges into battle and amorous adventures? How does she welcome her hero, who has spent himself on the plains of Troy and in exotic caverns and now wishes to be comforted at home?