Ovid, who admits he believes in Amazons, with "their strong sweating thighs clutching galloping horses, wild howls coming from their parched, cracked mouths," is eager to be stunned by the "fishy, monstrous, unreal." He imagines the jealous, stormy Xenia to be his Galatea and sweeps her back to Rome, where she unwittingly becomes the muse for the lost Medea, his darkest work. The only literate person in her community, Xenia acts as town mystic, casting spells, healing the sick and telling futures. Here Ovid meets Xenia, a wild-eyed young woman who lives in isolation. In this strong debut novel, Alison reimagines Ovid's sojourn on the east coast of the Black Sea, where Emperor Augustus, in the middle of a campaign to restore morality to his new empire, has banished the poet, displeased by the success of his Loves and The Art of Love. Little is known about Ovid's life in exile in the first century A.D., and only two lines of his acclaimed Medea survive today.
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