Tales from the Greek by JOHN HUGHES and MARCO LUCCIO has been an odyssey in the making as Good Reading discovers.
Award-winning author John Hughes and celebrated artist Marco Luccio are no strangers to each other. They have previously collaborated to produce the bestselling book, The Garden of Sorrows, which features 14 re-imagined fables in which Australian an
imals take on human qualities, as thief and actor, warrior and poet, farmer and merchant, each illustrated by Lucio’s etchings.
Now they have collaborated on an even bigger project. Tales from The Greek features Hughes’ eight narrative adaptations of Greek myths and tragedies. Hughes incorporates versions of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, a classic triangle of trust and deceit, and Antigone, which reverses time’s arrow so that the protagonist’s life unfolds like a film running in reverse to explore the paradoxical implications of living in a family that has been cursed, as well as Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Euripides’ Hecuba, and evocative new renderings of Daedalus and Icarus, Sisyphus, and Achilles.
Luccio used various mediums for the illustrations in the book. One of those mediums was Drypoint, an engraving method in which the design to be printed is scratched directly into a copperplate with a sharply pointed instrument. This method is physically taxing and he had to have remedial massage on his muscles to maintain the stamina to finish them. Lucio said in an interview when scratching on to copperplate, sometimes he would make a mistake, calling these ‘lines of regret’. He would scratch over them, so they became part of the work. No matter the medium, Lucio’s artwork in visceral and primal, which brings an emotional response complementing Hughes evocative writing.
Five years in the making with over 400 pages, 200 illustrations, and weighing in at 2.6 kilos (apparently six times more ink was used in this book compared to other books due to the artwork) this book is certainly a work of art.
Tales from The Greek by John Hughes and Marco Luccio, limited edition
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