Where Three Roads Meet : The Myth of Oedipus

Let’s start with place. You know where you are with place. There is a particular place always in my mind when it comes to this story. A place in Greece in the region of Phokis, where three roads meet.

Sigmund Freud lies ill. A man whose work, whose very life, has depended on the power of speech has now been all but silenced by cancer of the jaw. In the waking darkness he receives a visitor, come to tell a story that Freud will recognise .

But this is a different account of what happened when Oedipus met his natural father at the place where three roads meet. A story of choice, not fate: of what we know and what we believe, at all costs, we must not know.

Salley Vickers' Where Three Roads Meet is a strikingly original book. It retells the tragedy of Oedipus from an unexpected point of view and at the same time is a deeply moving portrait of the last days of Sigmund Freud, when his theory of the Oedipus complex was already as famous as he was.

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Ever since I heard of you I reckoned that here was a man I might talk to. A man almost as taken by the story I have come to tell as I who played a part in it. Though, if I understand you right, you would say we are all part of it.

Praise for Where Three Roads Meet:

‘There is something rare and special about Vickers as a novelist. She manages to touch something deep in all of us.’

Independent

‘A witty, ingenious novel…Vickers is comically irreverent about her own profession and deft at teasing out the slippery truths of Oedipus’s tale.’

Observer

‘This is a book to dwell on, to ponder, and delight in.’

Scotsman

‘A stylish and thought-provoking reinterpretation.’

Mail on Sunday