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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and welcome to Bookworm.

I'm very happy to have us my guest, Colm Toibin.

His new novel is called House of Names,

and it's a novel that is based on Greek tragedy,

in particular the tragedies of the House of Atreus.

And we begin with the story of a would-be wedding and a murder.

Kytamnestra is told that her daughter is to be wed

if she will only bring her daughter, Iphigenia, in her beautiful wedding garb, to the battlefield.

There will be a wedding on the battlefield for the success of the troops.

She does bring Iphaginaya, but instead it's her husband, Agamemnon's intention to sacrifice

Ephogenia to the gods so that the winds will blow them in the right way. Here we have a

mother dressed for her daughter's wedding, a daughter expecting to be married, and instead we encounter sacrifice

of a very intense sort, and the shock of it is very extreme. Now, Combe, tell me, these are emotions that are way beyond the normal bounds.

How did you find a way to give a voice immediately to these extremes?

I didn't know Euripides' late play Iphigenia in Owlis.

I simply hadn't read it.

...