The Children of Jocasta

By Natalie Haynes

A powerful retelling of Oedipus and Antigone from the perspectives of the women the myths overlooked, from Natalie Haynes, the Women's Prize-shortlisted author of A Thousand Ships and the Sunday Times bestseller Stone Blind.

My siblings and I have grown up in a cursed house, children of cursed parents . . .

Jocasta is just fifteen when she is told that she must marry the King of Thebes, an old man she has never met. Her life has never been her own, and nor will it be, unless she outlives her strange, absent husband.

Ismene is the same age when she is attacked in the palace she calls home. Since the day of her parents' tragic deaths a decade earlier, she has always longed to feel safe with the family she still has. But with a single act of violence, all that is about to change.

With the turn of these two events, a tragedy is set in motion. But not as you know it.

'Haynes balances a fresh take on the material . . . giving new voice to the often-overlooked but fascinating Jocasta and Ismene.' - Madeline Miller, author of Circe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: May 4, 2017
• ISBN: 9781509836185

Natalie Haynes

Natalie Haynes is the author of six books, including the nonfiction work Pandora’s Jar, which was a New York Times bestseller, and the novels A Thousand Ships, which was a national bestseller and short-listed for the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction, and Stone Blind. She has written and recorded nine series of Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics for the BBC. Haynes has written for the Times, the Independent, the Guardian, and the Observer. She lives in London.

Reviews for The Children of Jocasta

[lesleynicol · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An excellent book by this student of Greek mythology, whom we heard speaking at the SWF. I have always been fascinated by these stories particularly Oedipus and his family. The story is told with alternating voices of the young Jocasta who was "sold" by her father at the age 0f 16 to be a " wife' 'for King Laius who was a homosexual and forced her to bear a child to one of his courtiers. When the child was born it was taken away, hence the mystery of the young Oedipus. The other voice is that of Antigone, the daughter of Jocasta and Oedipus and how her life as a young girl was cruelly affected by what had befallen her mother. A fascinating and interesting story and beautiful writer. More please Natalie !!

[eyejaybee · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Natalie Haynes is probably best known for her BBC Radio 4 programmes, Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics, in which she talks amusingly yet also very informatively about ancient Greek and Latin texts. An accomplished classics scholar herself, she has helped salvage them from the hinterland of public awareness, highlighting the richness of their observations of human relationships and their enduring relevance to modern life. In this marvellous novel she revisits the Oedipus story, telling it from the perspective of Jocasta. (Do I need to offer a spoiler alert before suggesting that it doesn’t end happily? Ah, well, too late now …)Indeed, in Natalie Haynes’s version, Oedipus himself is an almost peripheral character, not appearing until more than half way through at the time of the death of Laius, Jocasta’s husband and King of Thebes, and thereafter playing a relatively minor role. This is a reversal of the emphasis in the original, in which Jocasta has only 120 lines (although they do include all the prescient understanding of the enormity of the gradually unfolding catastrophe). Haynes does, however, retain the essential smugness that Oedipus exudes in Sophocles’s original. Oedipus is very clever, and revels in his superiority, but that cleverness is outdone by his capacity for denial, despite the growing weight of evidence suggesting that all is not well.Jocasta’s story is interwoven of an account of the life and trials of Ismene, younger sister of Polynices and Eteocles (who passed alternate years as King of Thebes after Oedipus and Jocasta) and Antigone. At the start of the story, Ismene is attacked within the palace grounds by an unidentified assailant, and we and she are left beguiled as to what might be behind the assault.Haynes has an engaging and clear prose style, and the story moves ahead briskly. She also offers pragmatic and entirely plausible explanations for various aspects of the story that might trouble modern readers. For example, she offers an entirely new interpretation of the Sphinx that had troubled the close environs of Thebes for so long. The fateful encounter between Oedipus and King Laius is also handled in a pragmatic and credible manner. Haynes’s enthusiasm for the classics is infectious, and this entertaining reinterpretation of a story broadly familiar to all of us deserves great success in its own right.

[silverlily26 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this version of the Greek tale. It took me a couple if chapters to get used to the jumps between Jocasta's story and Ismene story. But I would recommend it to anyone interested in Greek myths and stories