Orpheus Lost

By: Janette Turner Hospital

Narrated by: Edwina Wren

A major literary event... the new novel from the award-winning author of Due Preparations for the Plague (also available from Bolinda Audio).

In the ancient myth, Orpheus travels to the underworld to rescue his lover Eurydice from death. In this compelling re-imagining of the Orpheus story, Leela travels into an underworld of kidnapping, torture, and despair in search of her lover. A mathematical genius, Leela has escaped her hardscrabble Southern hometown to study in Boston. There she encounters Mishka, a young Australian musician who soon becomes her lover. Then one day Leela is picked up off the street and taken to an interrogation centre. There has been an 'incident', an explosion on the underground; terrorists are suspected. Her interrogators reveal that Mishka may not be all he seems. But as she struggles to digest all this, Mishka disappears...

Achingly sensual, effortlessly lyrical, Janette Turner Hospital's dazzling Orpheus Lost is a powerful and disturbing novel. It is both a love story on a grand scale that spans America, Australia and Baghdad, and an examination of what happens to individuals when terrible mistakes are made in the name of 'national security'.

©2007 Janet Turner Hospital (P)2007 Bolinda Publishing

Look past the narrator

Really good love story with insight into the political turmoil of the fight against terrorism. The author is Aussie, but has a handle on the American scene. The narrator is also Aussie and can't do a southern accent, despite the fact the protagonist is from South Carolina. But you just overlook it because the story is compelling enough.