Heroes
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4.5 • 160 Ratings
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
Enter the monstrous and magical world of Stephen Fry's Sunday Times bestseller Heroes, brought to you by Penguin.
Shortlisted for the 2018 Specsavers audiobook award.
Imagine sandals on your feet, a sword in your hand and the hot sun beating down on your helmet.
Join Jason aboard the Argo as he quests for the Golden Fleece.
Marvel as Atalanta - a woman raised by bears - outrun any man before being tricked with golden apples.
Discover how Bellerophon captures the winged horse Pegasus to help him slay the monster Chimera.
Heroes is the story of what we mortals are truly capable of - at our worst and our very best..
Read by Stephen Fry himself, Heroes harnesses the magic of ancient legends in an entertaining and modern retelling in Fry's iconic and captivating narration.
'A romp through the lives of ancient Greek gods. Fry is at his story-telling best . . . the gods will be pleased' Times
'Assured and engaging. The pace is lively, the jokes are genuinely funny' Guardian
'An Olympian feat. The gods seem to be smiling on Fry - his myths are definitely a hit' Evening Standard
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
We’ve always loved Stephen Fry’s audiobook narrations and, like its predecessor Mythos, Heroes radiates the writer/actor’s passion for ancient Greek mythology. Having covered the Olympian gods in Mythos, Fry moves on to mortal heroes. Retaining all the original intrigue and humanity, his imaginative retellings prove these ancient figures aren’t as far removed from current-day heroes as we might think. Does a boy with an absent father and overwhelming sense of being special sound familiar? “You’re a wizard, Harry,” Fry chortles in his compelling tale of Theseus, the original chosen one. He also gives his characters rather amusing accents, most memorably a Yorkshire twang for Perseus. Exploring the divine and the doomed, this audiobook delivers ancient myths read by a modern legend.
Customer Reviews
Heroes was amazing
Next should come a book on that Alexander lover of himself who swat to mimic Achilles as a reflection of these myths.
Makes you wonder
Well, maybe some people would learn a lot about the classic (Ancient Greek) mythology from this book: not me, though; I poured over it over and over again since I was nine so, there were only a few (mostly the more, er, graphic) details that I didn’t already know.
But I believe there is one question this book will surely make anyone who reads/hears it wonder: just what is ‘civilised?’ In between the action, there is a lot of talk here about how the Ancient Greeks imagined themselves as the proud bearers of order, reason, and, well, civilisation in the savage, barbarous, and bestial world. And yet the means their heroes use to achieve these ends, and the mess they create by their own actions, well—
Let me start again. Does the ability to make a good account for oneself in a fight make one a savage, a barbarian? And all the plotting, scheming, seductions, infanticide, etc.: don’t they make an honest fight look, well, noble? Honourable? Moral? Should we try to crush everything ‘earthly,’ instinctive, emotional into submission and become pure AI, like the Architect from the Matrix Reloaded, or should we instead dispense with all the intellectual inhibitions and follow our instincts like Emmanuelle (not like Caligula, please?) Is there perhaps something between the two extremes? Is it the rules, as many of John Wick’s colleagues insist, that separate us from animals, or is it the motives that sometimes, in some of us, can be something other than survival and procreation?
Well, you get the picture, I hope.
Wonderful
Absolutely wonderful