Gift of the Gorgon

Famous English playwright Edward Damson has died violently at his remote Aegean home. His son - whom he has never acknowledged - is American academic Philip Damson who has had a lifelong obsession with the father he never knew

He begs permission from his stepmother Helen to write Edward's biography and she agrees reluctantly on condition Philip tells the whole story - a story, she warns, he will find painful

Helen, a pacifist academic, re-enacts her bizarre, turbulent eighteen years with the wildly passionate, explosive and self-absorbed Edward

Edward's rise to fame, decline into ridicule and estrangement from Helen is mirrored in the Greek myth of Athena and Perseus who slays the Gorgon only to become a gorgon himself. " ... a modern Bacchae ... it's elaborate intellectual construction contains a vivid and all too topical message that grabs you by the throat" - Sunday Times