'The Penelopiad' is one book in a series of ancient myths reimagined by contemporary writers from around the world, including Antonia Susan Byatt, Ali Smith, David Grossman, Su Tong, Olga Tokarczuk, Victor Pelevin, and others.

A wise, compassionate, and disturbing story about what sometimes happens when men wield power in society. What if Penelope—Odysseus's faithful wife, who waited for him for twenty years on Ithaca and raised his son Telemachus—had something in mind that Homer forgot to mention? And what secrets do the twelve handmaidens hanged on Odysseus's orders conceal? Margaret Atwood gives women the opportunity to tell their own version of the legendary story.