Books with title The Centaur

When Theo Harpe comes face-to-face with a cyclops during a summer adventure camp, it comes as no surprise. After all, as a Guardian of the Net, he’s protected the world from dangerous mythological creatures before, and his family have been serving the Greek gods for centuries. But this time Theo’s actions lead to a catastrophic chain of events which gives the enemies of thegods the chance to fight back. Theo must push himself to the limit and risk everything if he is to succeed in putting things right. And the future of those he loves and the whole of humankind is at stake…

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND THE PRIX DU MEILLEUR LIVRE ÉTRANGER The Centaur is a modern retelling of the legend of Chiron, the noblest and wisest of the centaurs, who, painfully wounded yet unable to die, gave up his immortality on behalf of Prometheus. In the retelling, Olympus becomes small-town Olinger High School; Chiron is George Caldwell, a science teacher there; and Prometheus is Caldwell's fifteen-year-old son, Peter. Brilliantly conflating the author's remembered past with tales from Greek mythology, John Updike translates Chiron's agonized search for relief into the incidents and accidents of three winter days spent in rural Pennsylvania in 1947. The result, said the judges of the National Book Award, is "a courageous and brilliant account of a conflict in gifts between an inarticulate American father and his highly articulate son."