The book’s name is Stories from Greek Tragedies. The word tragedy means very sad events. The author is Kieran McGovern. This book was published in 1994. It consists of four parts. I’m going to tell about the first part.
There were King Laius and Queen Jocasta in Thebes. When they had their first son, they took the boy to Delphi. Delphi was the place where you could ask the gods for a prophecy for the future. The word prophecy means the power of being able to say what will happen in the future. They asked, “Will our son be good to us?” Then the god Apollo answered, “The boy will kill his father.” It was a terrible answer. Laius decided to kill his son while he was still a baby, but Jocasta didn’t want to do that, so they took him to a lonely place where he would never be found.
Many years later, a strange and terrible monster called the Sphinx came to Thebes. The Sphinx was a lion with wings and the face of a woman. She asked people a question. If they could tell her, she would die. But the punishment for the wrong answer was death. Many people tried to guess the answer and were killed. King Laius decided to go to Delphi to ask the gods what he should do, but he was killed by thieves on the way to Delphi. That day, a stranger could answer the question that the Sphinx asked and then she died.
The stranger’s name was Oedipus and he became a king. Oedipus married Jocasta and got four children. For many years he was a very successful and much-loved king. Then a terrible plague came to Thebes. The word plague means disease that kills a lot of people. People thought that the gods were punishing them for something they had done. Then Creon, who was Oedipus’s partner, said, “Apollo says that a murderer has brought this plague to Thebes.”
King Oedipus decided to find the murderer who murdered King Kaius. After that, he heard from a prophet that the murderer was himself. He had killed his father and married his mother without knowing it. Queen Jocasta hanged herself to hear such a terrible secret. Then King Oedipus stuck pins into his eyes in order not to see all the pain he caused anymore.
I recommend this book. The story is easy to understand and interesting.
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