In The Shape Of A Boar

'In the Shape of a Boar' tracks a hidden narrative from pre-Homeric Greece to the darkest events of the twentieth century. As the ancient writers tell it, Artemis had sent a boar of "surprising size and ferocity" to ravage the land of Kalydon. Called together by Meleager, fifty heroes and one heroine - Atalanta - hunted down the beast and killed it in its lair. Three and a half millennia later, the hunt for the boar is re-enacted - and rewritten - once again.

In the chaotic last months of the Second World War, an SS officer is the quarry and Greek partisans the hunters. Their witness is a young Romanian Jew fleeing for his life across Europe. Sol Memel has lost his family and abandoned his lover, Ruth. Finding refuge in the mountains of Greece where the original hunt took place, his role in the SS officer's capture and death inspires him to rewrite the ancient myth as a poem. 'Die Keilerjagd' and its author will be acclaimed throughout post-war Europe. But Sol's account of the hunt contains its own secret. Twenty years later, Ruth re-enters his life to make a film based on the writing of the poem and Sol finds himself cast as the quarry in this latest version of the tale.