Horcynus Orca

To discover: A forgotten masterpiece, a modern odyssey, a grand maritime epic. The landscapes around the Strait of Messina form the bridge between the myths of antiquity and the present. Here, between Scylla and Charybdis, Odysseus heard the song of the sirens. It is to this very place, his home, that the hero of Stefano D'Arrigo's masterpiece 'Horcynus Orca' strives, the last great undiscovered novel of modernity, comparable only to Joyce, Kafka, Musil, and Proust. D'Arrigo encapsulates this entire world in just four days: A sailor returning home in 1943 after the collapse of the Navy learns what the war has made of his people. A mysterious woman helps the fisherman without a boat across the strait, but he must learn that every return is in vain when death is at the helm. Forty years after its publication, Moshe Kahn has succeeded in bringing this long-overlooked work to light.