House of Names

From the thrilling imagination of bestselling, award-winning Colm Tóibín comes a retelling of the story of Clytemnestra - spectacularly audacious, violent, vengeful, lustful, and instantly compelling - and her children.

*I HAVE BEEN ACQUAINTED WITH THE SMELL OF DEATH.*

Judged, despised, cursed by gods she has long since lost faith in, the murderess *Clytemnestra *tells of the deception of *Agamemnon*, how he sacrificed her eldest daughter - her beloved *Iphigenia* - to the Trojan campaign; how Clytemnestra used what power she had, seducing the prisoner *Aegisthus*, turning the government against its lord; plotting the many long years until her beacon fires announce the king's return...

*Electra*, daughter of a murdered father, loyal subject of the rightful king, watches Clytemnestra and her lover with cold anger and slow-burning cunning. She watches, as they walk the gardens and corridors of the house of Atreus. She waits for the traitors to become complacent, to believe they are finally safe; she waits for her exiled brother, *Orestes*, for the boy to become a warrior, for fate to follow him home. She watches and she waits, until her spies announce her brother's return...