The Way to Colonos
A Greek Triptych
Will be published approx. on 12. February 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
176 pages
978-1-946022-77-6 (ISBN)
Description
A fiery modern retelling of three Greek tragedies, "written in an ageless prose that instantly strikes the reader as the work of a master." (Rachel Cusk, from the foreword)
First published in 1961, The Way to Colonos recasts three seminal plays by Sophocles into tales of modern women and warfare, probing their characters with savage intimacy. Antigone-a stylish woman in her thirties-wheeling her father, Oedipus, onto the ferry to Colonos, is disgusted by his self-absorption, guilt, and evasions. A suburban Electra dreams of a bloody confrontation with her mother, Clytemnestra, that may never come to pass. Philoctetes, a castaway soldier, navigates shifting allegiances in a guerrilla war that divided Greece after World War II.
As Rachel Cusk writes in her foreword to this new edition, Cicellis was a woman before her time, whose work-written in English, her second language-offers particularly "shocking insight into the secret lives of young women" and is only now "free to reach readers with an appetite for female artistic authority, who wish to see the world through sharp fresh eyes."
First published in 1961, The Way to Colonos recasts three seminal plays by Sophocles into tales of modern women and warfare, probing their characters with savage intimacy. Antigone-a stylish woman in her thirties-wheeling her father, Oedipus, onto the ferry to Colonos, is disgusted by his self-absorption, guilt, and evasions. A suburban Electra dreams of a bloody confrontation with her mother, Clytemnestra, that may never come to pass. Philoctetes, a castaway soldier, navigates shifting allegiances in a guerrilla war that divided Greece after World War II.
As Rachel Cusk writes in her foreword to this new edition, Cicellis was a woman before her time, whose work-written in English, her second language-offers particularly "shocking insight into the secret lives of young women" and is only now "free to reach readers with an appetite for female artistic authority, who wish to see the world through sharp fresh eyes."
Reviews / Votes
"Kay Cicellis will go very far."-Vita Sackville-West
"Cicellis . . . looks at life steadily and as if for the first time, with profound watchfulness, as if nothing else mattered. That is her essential originality; she has her own vision of life . . . She is fascinated by certain kinds of experience, especially those in which the imagination seems to grow transparent, so that all things are reflected in it, and everything is in its place . . . Cicellis takes life from many sides, and is always sensitively conscious of the quality of the situation she describes. She has a style which catches the intimate nature of things and never stops at the surface. She is a remarkable writer."
-Edwin Muir, The Observer
"One of the most refreshing and exciting of the world's younger women novelists."
-Linda Brandi, The New York Times
"Her style is simple . . . her narrative is well-knit, and her detail cleverly observed and selected."
-David Tylden-Wright, Times Literary Supplement
"Cicellis writes of very modern things and people . . . but the excellence of her writing lies in the fact that it has a timeless quality, a continuity with antiquity, a colour and warmth that is Greek whatever the time."
-Times Literary Supplement
"Cicellis . . . has a startling talent, and her fluent precision lends a kind of dignity to the characters she creates."
-Marigold Johnson, Times Literary Supplement
"Kay Cicellis bridges the gap between Sophocles and UNRRA, between Electra and the minutiae of contemporary Greek middle-class life . . . a writer of intelligence who never throws away a word nor departs an inch from her high seriousness."
-Kenneth Young, Daily Telegraph
"She is like Penelope at her web, shuttling the coloured threads to and fro, weaving into the pattern love and hate, laughter and death . . . infinitely subtle."
-Peter Green, Daily Telegraph
"War and circumstance have made her an English writer of high intelligence and great perspicaciousness exactly expressed."
-Martin Shuttleworth, The Listener
"The characters in these Greek stories burn in that enclosed air of people living, damned, within the rigid context of their emotions. Existence is an imposition which all recognise and none avoids."
-David Storey, Sunday Times
"She expresses the immediacy of human relations with an imaginative awareness which is intensely alive to the physically felt moment."
-Hugh P. A Fausset
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Product notice
With flaps
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 257 mm
Width: 167 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
334 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-946022-77-6 (9781946022776)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Kay Cicellis (1926-2001) was born to Greek parents in Marseilles, where she spent her first nine years. Having learned French and English in the nursery, she spent her later childhood in Athens and on her father's native island of Cephalonia. Her first stories, smuggled out of Athens during the Nazi occupation, were published in the British military press when she was a teenager. Her first story collection, The Easy Way, appeared with an introduction by Vita Sackville-West in 1950. After The Way to Colonos, Cicellis published a second collection, Death of a Town, and two novels, Ten Seconds from Now and No Name in the Street. She went on to become known as the preeminent Greek-English translator of her time, while working actively to oppose the right-wing dictatorship that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974.
Rachel Cusk is the author of Second Place, the Outline trilogy, the memoirs A Life's Work and Aftermath, and several other works of fiction and nonfiction. She is a Guggenheim Fellow. She lives in Paris.
Rachel Cusk is the author of Second Place, the Outline trilogy, the memoirs A Life's Work and Aftermath, and several other works of fiction and nonfiction. She is a Guggenheim Fellow. She lives in Paris.
Content
Foreword by Rachel Cusk
Author's Note
The Way to Colonos
The Return
The Exile
Author's Note
The Way to Colonos
The Return
The Exile