Weight : The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

The free man never thinks of escape

The Titan Atlas has led a failed rebellion against the gods of Olympus and is condemned to bear the weight of the earth and the heavens for eternity. When Heracles is required, as one of his twelve labours, to steal the golden apples of life he seeks out Atlas and proposes a bargain: he will shoulder the world temporarily if the Titan will bring him the fruit. Enticed by the prospect of even a short-lived freedom, Atlas agrees and an uneasy partnership is born.

With typical wit and verve, Jeanette Winterson brings Atlas' story into the twenty-first century and peppers her retelling with thorny questions—about the nature of choice and coercion and about how we forge our own destiny. In Weight , Winterson’s skill in turning the familiar on its head and showing us a different truth is once more put to dazzling effect.

Praise for Weight:

‘I’m blown away by the power of her language.'

Val McDermid

‘Winterson’s interpretation is a shining amalgam of originality, personal experience and wisdom. It is in the best sense a conversation with the reader and a sharing of the writer’s life as she places the ancient myth within the mythology of her unknown origins…Winterson, having gathered her myths, sets them free in the galactic garden of an expanding universe, the greatest, truest myth of all, a lost paradise where, as she comforrts herself, “your first parent was a star”.’

Bulletin