Ulrike Draesner

Penelope – the epitome of the faithful wife, perfect in her role as a shrewd but above all modest wife. Ulrike Draesner courageously throws this narrative overboard and looks at Penelope’s desires, her drive, her departure into a new life – and rewrites her: clever, passionate, freedom-loving.
When it becomes clear that the traumatized war returnee Odysseus is no longer viable as a ruler, she sets sail together with a hundred women. Cunningly, they escape their pursuers on a ship specially built for the purpose. The difference between free Hellenic women and their African slaves is the first to melt away. More and more women raise their voices. Their vision: a new home for all! Ulrike Draesner’s re-reading of the original tale of Western literature is intoxicating in its inventiveness, wit and poetic furor.

Ulrike Dra esner has received numerous awards for her novels, essays and poems. After various international guest lectureships and poetry lectures, she has been a professor at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig since April 2018.