*本书出版后直接冲上Sunday Times的畅销榜，在榜上待了一个月

*作者的下一本书Medea将在2024年出版，Medea是希腊神话里的一位出名的杀手，最后为了报复自己的丈夫而谋杀自己的孩子—她是如何走到这一步？

“Witty, gripping, ruthless” - Margaret Atwood 

“Beautiful and moving”- Neil Gaiman 

“对男人来说，我们是怪兽。因为我们的战斗力、我们的力量，他们怕我们，所以叫我们怪兽。” （'So to mortal men, we are monsters. Because of our flight, our strength. They fear us, so they call us monsters.’）

美杜莎的一家全都是神，她是其中唯一的凡人。在成长的过程中，她发现自己是唯一有变化的、唯一能受伤的。她的凡人寿命带给她一种迫切性，这个感觉是家人没办法体会的。当海神在雅典娜神庙犯下一个不可原谅的错误，雅典娜在各处使出她的报仇，而美杜莎因此从此被改变。扭动的毒杀代替了她的头发，而她的注视能让一切生物变成石头。她无法控制自己的能力，她看什么破坏什么，只剩下一个充满阴影及黑暗的一生。

这个故事叙述了一名少女如何成为一位怪兽，但在她的内心深处，她根本不是怪兽。在这本书中，她是自己故事里的悲惨英雄，拥有自己的故事。她身边有爱她的人，有在她被Perseus杀后为她哭泣的人。Perseus在这个故事里是一名冷酷的恶棍，很冷血地杀了美杜莎，只为了完成一个任务。

作者Natalie Haynes在不同文学作品里找不到这般的美杜莎，她总是被呈现为一名单薄的怪兽，没有任何背景故事。作者认为美杜莎不被人看见，更不被人了解，于是希望透过这本小说来让更多读者认识真实的美杜莎。

关于作者：

Natalie Haynes is a writer and broadcaster. She is the author of The Amber Fury, The Children of Jocasta, and A Thousand Ships, which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2020. Her non-fiction book about women in Greek Myth, Pandora’s Jar, was a New York Times Bestseller in 2022. She has written and performed eight series of her BBC Radio 4 show, Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics. In 2015 she was awarded the Classical Association Prize for her work in bringing Classics to a wider audience. Stone Blind is her fourth novel.

好评：

“The rollicking narrative voice that energises Stone Blind . . . is a voice that feels at once bitingly (post)modern and filled with old wisdom . . . The Gorgon’s head will take on a new and powerful resonance as a symbol of the way stories can be warped by time. Stone Blind acts as a brilliant and compellingly readable corrective.“ - The Observer

“Stone Blind is an exceptionally powerful retelling of Medusa's story, an emotional gut punch of a novel. Haynes brilliantly pulls off the feat of seamlessly alternating humour and heartbreak, creating characters that stay with you long after the novel's end. It is a dazzling achievement” - Elodie Harper, author of The Wolf Den trilogy

“With this, her third novel based on ancient myth, [Haynes] has found a way of using all her classical erudition and her vivid sense of the ambiguous potency of the ancient stories, while being simultaneously very, very funny” - Guardian

“A fierce feminist exploration of female rage, written with wit and empathy. Haynes makes the classics brutally relevant, and we reckon this one is going to be huge” - Glamour

“It is no exaggeration to say that Haynes is the modern embodiment of the best of Homer. She is a proper, classic storyteller, whose linguistic skills and wit will have you hanging on every word” - Radio Times

“Stone Blind is inventive and playful . . . [and] very funny” - Antonia Senior, The Times

“Pat Barker, Margaret Atwood and Madeline Miller have all successfully picked at the seams of the traditionally male take on these fantastic tales. But Natalie Haynes’s genius, this time with Stone Blind, her third Greek myth novel, is to not just focus on the female experience of Greek myth but also to add zest, humour and more than a little mischief . . . The ride is gripping, funny and heartbreaking. Love, sorrow, adventure and humour - Stone Blind has it all” - Metro

“What makes a monster is the central question in Natalie Haynes’ wry, spry feminist take on the Medusa myth . . . an earthy, playful yet rage-filled upending of the Greek hero trope” - Mail Online

“Haynes’ clever, empathetic writing transforms Medusa from Gorgon into a girl, who’s a victim of the cruel machinations of the gods and of circumstance” - Sarra Manning, Red Magazine

“Natalie Haynes has made a contemporary classic out of a classic . . . and it should win prizes” - Monique Roffey, author of The Mermaid of Black Conch

“There’s real tenderness in Haynes’s portrait of Medusa, a mortal abomination born into a family of divinities, and the efforts of her immortal Gorgon sisters to protect her from herself” - Daisy Dunn, The Spectator

“Haynes is [a] master of her trade . . . She succeeds in breathing warm life into some of our oldest stories” - Telegraph