This image is the cover for the book Electra

Electra

From the dramatist Aristotle called “the most tragic of poets,” a retelling of the classical myth of a family torn apart by vengeance.

One of the most well-known tragedies by Euripides, Electra brings to life the story of siblings driven to matricide to avenge their father’s death. With a unique empathy for the plight of his female characters, Euripides places Electra’s passion and sorrow at the center of the play, gracing her with a complexity that distinguishes the tragedian from contemporaries Sophocles and Aeschylus, who also wrote versions of the myth, and making Euripides’s Electra as relevant and riveting for the modern reader as when it was first produced in the fifth century BC.

Euripides

Euripides was a tragedian of classical Athens. He was born on Salamis Island around 480 BC to his mother, Cleito, and father, Mnesarchus, a retailer who lived in a village near Athens. He had two disastrous marriages, and both his wives—Melite and Choerine (the latter bearing him three sons)—were unfaithful. He became a recluse, making a home for himself in a cave on Salamis. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. He became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education. The details of his death are uncertain.

Open Road Media