THE World's Desire

If Homer had written a nineteenth-century romance novel, this would have been it. Whatever happened to Odysseus after his disastrous return home to Ithaca? Adventure author H. Rider Haggard, most famous for writing King Solomon''s Mines, and learned Hellenist Andrew Lang collaborate to make this epic romance as allegorical and folkloric as any of Grimm''s fairy tales. They effortlessly capture the essence of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Grieving for his wife, Odysseus is visited in dreams by his former love, Helen of Troy, who shows him how to equip himself with the Bow of Erytus and his intact armor. Helen beckons Odysseus to search for her in Egypt, where he encounters heroic figures, free from the restrictions of time and death. Neither murderous political games at the court of the Pharaoh, nor epic battles, nor even the Pharaoh''s wife''s temptations can make him stray from his course. In this, his last journey, Odysseus completes his lifelong search for Beauty itself, in the person of the World''s Desire, Helen of Troy. First published in 1890, this book has received critical acclaim throughout its century-long life.