A stunning reimagining of the Oedipus and Antigone stories told from the perspectives of the women the myths overlooked.

In The Children of Jocasta, Natalie Haynes retells the Oedipus and Antigone myths to reveal a new side of an ancient story ...

My siblings and I have grown up in a cursed house, children of cursed parents ...

Jocasta is just 15 when she is told that she must marry the King of Thebes, an old man she has never met. Her life has never been her own, and nor will it be, unless she outlives her strange, absent husband.

Ismene is the same age when she is attacked in the palace she calls home. Since the day of her parents' tragic deaths a decade earlier, she has always longed to feel safe with the family she still has. But with a single act of violence, all that is about to change.

With the turn of these two events, a tragedy is set in motion. But not as you know it.

'A wonderful and inventive take on an ancient tale.' The Times

'Haynes is master of her trade, crafting perfect sentences and believable characters who speak and think in delicately nuanced language.' The Telegraph

'Haynes’s fascination with this long vanished world is evident in every line ... Her Thebes ... is vividly captured: a place of hard light and sharp shadows, dust, fountains and dry heat.' The Guardian