Booker-winner John Banville retells the Greek myth of Amphitryon, in which Zeus makes love to a mortal woman in the guise of her own husband. Banville's version of the tale takes place during a single day, on a gloomy Irish manor where a family reunites after the patriarch, Adam Godly, a brilliant mathematician and physicist, has fallen into a coma. The novel is narrated with great literary brio by the god Hermes, who blends elevated classical lyricism with vulgar mischief.
