{"product_id":"the-laughter-of-aphrodite-a-novel-about-sappho-of-lesbos-9780520079663","title":"The Laughter of Aphrodite: A Novel about Sappho of Lesbos","description":"\u003cp\u003eBest-selling classicist Peter Green recreates the life and times of the Greek lyric poet Sappho in this beautifully conceived  sharply detailed work of historical imagination. We meet Sappho at the age of fifty  when she is shaken by her fatal and final love affair with Phaon. She narrates her own story from the vantage point of self-questioning middle age  and her candid meditations make intimate  engrossing reading.  Only fragments of Sapphos poetry survive. In imagining Sapphos life Green found his task \"rather like that of an archaeologist reassembling some amphora from hundreds of shardsof which more than half are missing.\" Yet  in his synthesis of historical evidence and ebullient invention  Green produces a seamless  moving  and persuasive portrait. He recreates Sapphos life by interweaving her surviving poetry into the narrative  not as quotations  but as her own imagined speeches and thoughts.  Sapphos life spanned one of the most exciting periods in Greek history. Greens novel  full of details about daily life on ancient Lesbos  draws the reader into the political and social climate of her world: the civil strife accompanying the transition from aristocracy to mercantilism  the household relations between slave and aristocrat  the details of sea travel in the Aegean. Green wrote the novel while living on Lesbos  and his graceful rendering of the landscape  the rhythms of the seasons  and the varied flora of Sapphos island pervades the narrative.  Sapphos poetry reveals a direct  spontaneous woman who eschewed artifice and embellishment. Greens extraordinary talent captures those qualities and brings this woman of unflinching honesty very much to life.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45647860891701,"sku":"ByrdShop_0520079663","price":79.84,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780520079663.jpg?v=1781698469","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-laughter-of-aphrodite-a-novel-about-sappho-of-lesbos-9780520079663","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}