'Penelope's Web is a book about war that, like The Naked and the Dead or Catch-22, manages to be about very much more… Christopher Rush has written a profound meditation not just on our present condition but on how we all live inside 'the web', how we weave fact, the way we make and unmake fictions, and how we choose to live and die by them' – Brian Morton, Scottish Review of Books
'Hugely entertaining and instructively disturbing… it's also fiercely learned… The novel is beautifully written and superbly paced. Its 500 pages whizz past like one of Odysseus' deadly arrows' – Dr Jon Hesk, Hellenist Lecturer at St Andrews University
Odysseus returns to Ithaca after nearly twenty years, half of it spent as a soldier and the other half as a soldier of fortune. During his absence his wife Penelope remains faithful, despite Odysseus being missing and presumed dead, but when her husband suddenly reappears he confronts those who have been trying to seduce his wife and kills them all.#
This is a novel about war and peace, about how returning soldiers can find peace more horrible than war, and home more hellish than the battlefield.