Book
The World’s Desire
First published 1890
Odysseus returns to Ithaca after further wandering only to find Penelope dead and his home devastated. A vision sends him in search of Helen, the “World’s Desire”, and his final voyage carries him to Egypt, where Helen is entangled with Pharaoh Merneptah, the priest Rei and the dangerous Queen Meriamun.
Written with Andrew Lang, the novel fuses the Odyssey, Egyptian romance and traditions of the Exodus. Gods, sorcery and dynastic conflict turn Odysseus’s pursuit of ideal beauty into a fatal struggle between Helen and Meriamun, while the hero’s last adventure becomes a meditation on longing and the impossibility of recovering the past.
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