The Leto Bundle

by Marina Warner (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $4.12

  When a mummy in the Museum of Albion is unpacked it is found to contain a bundle of curious objects and documents which tell of the wanderings of an unknown woman, Leto. On the run, in a far-off era of civil strife, Leto gives birth to twins, shelters with wolves, survives in a desert stronghold as the lover of its commander, stows away on a ship loaded with plundered antiquities and then works as a maid in a war-torn city. She loses her son but saves her daughter during a long siege. As the novel sweeps from mythological times and the Middle Ages to the treasure-hunting of Victorian Europe and into the present day, Leto reappears in different guises. Eventually she becomes a servant to a rock singer, and begins to search for her son.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2001

  $5.78

  Taking as her start point, Ovid's story about Leto, who pregnant by Jupiter flees the wrath of his wife Juno, Marina Warner adapts the tale to a wild and lawless time, when young Leto, on the run from her lover's wife, gives birth to twins. She saves the baby girl, but the boy is snatched from her. Over the centuries, we find Leto searching for her son. As the novel sweeps from mythological times and the Dark Ages, to the urban squalor of Victorian Europe, and ultimately to the present day, as wars still rage across the region where Ovid first imagined her, Leto reappears, with her daughter, in different guises - as singer, artist, maid, Bosnian refugee.A magical feat of storytelling, full of myth and mystery, sensual writing and suspense, which keeps the reader guessing right up to the end.