These stories, selected from three novels, show events of the Trojan War reflected through the minds of participants who are immersed in the immediacy of the moment. Because we're blessed with the gift of not knowing the future, life isn't just what happens. It's enriched by the cloud of possibilities, what might happen, what we expect and hope for. This novel is a showing rather than a telling of the stories of Troy, restoring the immediacy of the moment as experienced by Cassandra, Helen, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, Polyxena, Andromache, and Hecuba. Your familiarity with the traditional stories will prompt you to anticipate, only to be surprised by depths of personality and motivation, consistent with the original, but unexpected. And you'll savor the ironic differences between what you know as a reader and what the characters know. Rather than tediously proceed from one event to the next, you leap ahead from one dramatic moment to the next. The action takes place in dialogue and inner dialogue (thoughts in the making) rather than narration/exposition. A standard synopsis/plot summary would miss the point of the book. The story unfolds as traditionally known, but the personalities and motivations of the main characters are often surprising. For example: Helen and Paris don't go to Troy and no one knows where they are until after the war has gone on for more than nine years. When she shows up, she had close-cropped hair and a jagged scar across her cheek (from an encounter with pirates. Achilles is a cross-dresser. He has a romance with Polyxena, daughter of the king of Troy, who has the look and the training of an Amazon and can out-wrestle her. Clytemnestra's handmaid is her lover Aegisthus in disguise. Her children are his, not her husband Agamemnon's.

"This means war!" yells King Menelaus when he finds out that his wife has sailed away in the dead of night with a Trojan prince. Follow the epic struggle of the great Greek heroes as they seek their revenge on Troy with an army of 100,000 men. Full of action, adventure and suspense, these fast-moving stories have been retold for today's readers in a way that is guaranteed to bring the Greek myths to life.

A debut story collection of spectacular imaginative range and lyricism from a Pushcart Prize–winning author. In Ayse Papatya Bucak’s dreamlike narratives, dead girls recount the effects of an earthquake and a chess-playing automaton falls in love. A student stops eating and no one knows whether her act is personal or political. A Turkish wrestler, a hero in the East, is seen as a brute in the West. The anguish of an Armenian refugee is “performed” at an American fund-raiser. An Ottoman ambassador in Paris amasses a tantalizing collection of erotic art. And in the masterful title story, the Greek god Apollo confronts his personal history and bewails his Homeric reputation as he tries to memorialize, and make sense of, generations of war. A joy and a provocation, Bucak’s stories confront the nature of historical memory with humor and humanity. Surreal and poignant, they examine the tension between myth and history, cultural categories and personal identity, performance and authenticity.

Trojan Tales Related by Ulysses, Helenus, Hector, Achilles, and Priam is a fascinating retelling of the Trojan War. This book is perfect for anyone interested in ancient history, mythology, and epic tales. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.