Leucippe and Clitophon

'Her mouth was like the bloom of a rose, when the rose begins to part the lips of its petals. As soon as I saw, I was done for...All my dreams were of Leucippe.'

Achilles Tatius' Leucippe and Clitophon is the most bizarre and risqu'e of the five 'Greek novels' of idealized love between boy and girl that survive from the period of the Roman empire. Stretching the capacity of the genre to its limits, Achilles' narrative covers adultery, violence, evisceration, pederasty, virginity-testing, and (of course) an improbable happy ending. Ingenious and sophisticated in conception, Leucippe and Clitophon is in execution at once subtle, stylish, moving, brash, tasteless, and obscene. This new translation aims to capture Achilles' writing in all its exuberant variety.

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