In the ancient myth, Orpheus travels to the underworld to rescue his lover Eurydice from death. In this compelling re-imagining of the Orpheus story, Leela travels into an underworld of kidnapping, torture and despair in search of her lover. A mathematical genius, Leela has escaped her hardscrabble Southern hometown to study in Boston. There she encounters Mishka, a young Australian musician who soon becomes her lover. Then one day Leela is picked up off the street and taken to an interrogation centre. There has been an ‘incident’, an explosion on the underground; terrorists are suspected. Her interrogators reveal that Mishka may not be all he seems. But as she struggles to digest all this, Mishka disappears…

Achingly sensual, effortlessly lyrical, Janette Turner Hospital’s dazzling Orpheus Lost is a powerful and disturbing novel. It is both a love story on a grand scale that spans America, Australia and Baghdad, and an examination of what happens to individuals when terrible mistakes are made in the name of ‘national security’.