Stone Blind

Medusa still cannot stop asking why she did not close her eyes. She is the lone mortal in a family of gods, and as she grows up beside her sisters she gradually sees that she alone ages, changes and tires. Her short, finite life gives her a sense of urgency that her immortal kin will never share.

Her world shifts when a god's desire drives him to an act beyond forgiveness, and the cost falls on Medusa. She is transformed into a Gorgon, with sharp teeth, a crown of snakes and a stare that turns anything living to stone. Horrified by her own reflection, she realises she can no longer love anything without destroying it, so she withdraws into the shadows to keep her deadly reach as small as possible. That lonely existence lasts until Perseus sets out on a perilous mission to take a Gorgon's head.

Natalie Haynes, a classicist and broadcaster, retells this Greek myth from Medusa's point of view. The novel follows how a young woman came to be seen as a monster, and shows that she was never really one.