"The first female translator of the epic into English in over sixty years, Stephanie McCarter addresses accuracy in translation and its representation of women, gendered dynamics of power, and sexual violence in Ovid's classic. Ovid's Metamorphoses is an epic poem, but one that upturns almost every convention. There is no main hero, no central conflict, and no sustained objective. What it is about (power, defiance, art, love, abuse, grief, rape, war,...

"With accuracy, wit, and intelligence, this remarkable new translation of The Golden Ass breathes new life into Apuleius's classic work. Sarah Ruden, a lyric poet as well as a highly respected translator, skillfully duplicates the verbal high jinks of Apuleius's ever-popular novel. It tells the story of Lucius, a curious and silly young man, who is turned into a donkey when he meddles with witchcraft. Doomed to wander from region to region and mistreated...

"Like Richard Ellmann's James Joyce, Richard Zenith's Pessoa immortalizes the life of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Eighty-five years after his wrenching death in a cramped Lisbon apartment, where he left more than 25,000 manuscript sheets in a wooden trunk, Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) remains one of the most enigmatic and underappreciated poets of the twentieth century. Celebrated for writing in dozens of different poetic voices,...

APULEIUS, Lucius, religious philosopher and rhetorician, was born c. A.D. 125 at Madaura in N. Africa. Educated at Carthage and Athens, he travelled in Greece and Asia Minor, became an advocate in Rome, and later returned to Africa. When he married Pudentilla he vindicated himself against her parents' accusation that he practiced magic. The rest of his life he spent at Carthage writing and lecturing and performing priestly duties. Of his extant genuine...

Recreated from Ovid's "Metamorphoses," these stories, ballads, and headline news articles let the Minotaur, King Midas, Arachne, Bacchus, Persephone, and many more haunting figures walk the Earth once more.