Oedipus on the road

a novel

de Henry Bauchau

Oedipus on the Road is a rendering of the journey that leads Oedipus from Thebes to Colonus - and from a world of exile to one of legend. This is the chapter that Sophocles never wrote, the redemptive passage of the fallen, blinded king to his final - this time glorious - encounter with destiny. Bauchau finds Oedipus stranded outside the walls of his former palace, eye sockets and soul still bleeding, and leads him - along with his daughter Antigone and the seductive shepherd-bandit Clius, whose loyalty to the pair probably has less to do with his allegiance to Oedipus than his intentions toward his daughter - through a geographical and spiritual landscape littered with the physical, artistic, and mental rites of passage that separate Oedipus from immortality.