Böcker av Tony Whitefield

Imagine a storyteller in ancient Greece who makes his living telling stories about recent events, sometimes only two or three generations after the events took place. How different might these stories be to the ones written down over 500 years later?Tony Whitefield retells the well-known Greek myth of Jason and the Argonauts, using the voice of his storyteller Peter. By imagining these ancient stories without the direct influence of gods on the participants, Tony attempts to unravel the mythological explanations explaining what might have occurred.It is the year 1190 BCE and a group of people have gathered to listen to Peter the storyteller. One of his most requested stories concerns a young man by the name of Jason who together with forty-eight men and one woman, set off on an impossible journey to the edge of the known world in a boat named 'Argo' to locate a golden sheep's fleece. In doing so, they discover much more than they had originally imagined.

One day while cleaning out his roof attic, recently retired business consultant Angus Harrison finds a box containing typed and handwritten stories bound together in one neat pile of folders. On further inspection, he discovers that the contents contain the memoirs of his paternal grandfather and World War 1 veteran, someone he didn't know a great deal about. What is contained in those stories will change Angus' life forever, and bind him to the Greek island of his wife's family in more ways that he could have possibly imagined. He discovers that his grandfather and his two friends, Maroula and Mustafa, were active participants in, and had front row seats to some amazing globally significant events.

Hypsipyle is one of those mythical characters from ancient Greek literature who was well known at the time of Apollonius, Ovid and Statius, butis largely unknown today. From her life as the daughter of King Thoas and Queen Myrina on the northern Aegean island of Limnos, through her short reign as a monarch who was eventually sold into slavery, Tony Whitefield recreates her story using the existing literature and a fair degree of imagination. We are introduced to her life through the eyes of Peter, an ageing story teller from Limnos, who has made his living re-telling her story to any group who will employ him. This is to be his last time as a storyteller, as he is old and wants to retire to a quiet life on the remote island of Chryse with his goats and sheep for his remaining years.