Through National Book Award-winning translator Allen Mandelbaum's poetic artistry,

this gloriously entertaining achievement of literature — classical myths filtered

through the worldly and far from reverent sensibility of the Roman poet Ovid — is
revealed anew.Savage and sophisticated, mischievious and majestic, witty and
wicked, The Metamorphoses weaves together every major mythological story to display
a dazzling array of miraculous changes, from the time chaos is transformed into
order at the moment of creation, to the time when the soul of Julius Caeser is
turned into a star and set in the heavens. In its earthiness, its psychological
acuity, this classic work continues to speak over the centuries to our time.
"Reading Mandelbaum's extraordinary translation, one imagines Ovid in his darkest
moods with the heart of Baudelaire...Brilliant."—Booklist