Ulysses, Odysseus, Nobody: a man of multiform talent, the myth that sails the seas, the most formidable and modern hero of all time is here, in these pages. And he speaks to us in the first person, telling his story with all of the humanity and courage that, over twenty-seven centuries, have made him more immortal than a god.
From his birth on the small, rocky island of Ithaca to the formation of the man and warrior alongside his father Laertes, from the maternal arms of the wet-nurse Eurycleia to the navigation of the vast sea until Sparta, from the dazzling and dangerous beauty of Elena to the love for Penelope, from the solemn oaths of the young loyal princes to the outbreak of incredible discord, this novel, the first of two volumes, following Odysseus up to the great and terrible surrender of Troy.
Before the start of the homecoming – the extraordinary return journey – the adventure is already studded with extraordinary encounters, marked by profound crises, dominated by the intelligence and boldness a man who is able, step by step, to become a hero.
The figure of Odysseus has had the extraordinary fate of being “reincarnated” time and again: the greatest poets have sung his praises, and his deep and ever new footprint can be found in the most important works of literature of all time and across the world.
We all feel that we are familiar with the exploits of Odysseus, but in this novel, drawing on the immense wealth of myths of which he is the protagonist, Valerio Massimo Manfredi brings to light episodes and characters that we did not know, and gives us the remarkable sensation of discovering a whole new world teeming with men, women, and deeds both glorious and unhappy. It shows us how connected Greek epic poetry is to the character of Odysseus: Alcestis, the labours of Heracles, the Seven against Thebes, the Argonauts, as well as the two poems of Homer. Odysseus does not emerge alone from the shadows of gods and warriors, but his entire development, his family roots, the epic stories fed to him by his grandfather-wolf Autolykos and his Argonaut father, the dialogues with Heracles and Aias, meetings with the mysterious green-eyed Athena, every detail giving added weight to an astonishing story.
With genuine rigour but also with a vibrant adhesion to a subject “in continuous flux”, Manfredi makes the tough decision to entrust the telling of the story to the one who said that his name was Nobody: a direct, powerful voice carved in simplicity. A voice of unquestionable fascination, a story as insistent as the drums of war, as stormy as Poseidon’s sea and as full of poetry as the song of the Sirens.