Natalie Haynes: ‘All I could understand in Finnegans Wake were the smutty Latin bits’

The author and classicist on the greatest play ever written – and the enduring appeal of Calvin and Hobbes

The book I am currently reading
For fun, Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. I loved Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell; I’ve been looking forward to this. I’m lost in a strange labyrinth and I’m not sure how to get out, or even if I want to. For work, I have Ovid’s Metamorphoses on the go, because I’m writing a novel about Medusa and I am nicking all of it from him.

The book that changed my life
Euripides’ Medea (which I read before I saw, books being easier to find than stagings of Greek tragedy in Birmingham in the 90s). I have never recovered: I still think it’s the greatest play ever written. I must have seen it 20 times in different productions, languages, settings. Every time I read it I find something new.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3hYs9qQ