Stone Blind

the breathtaking Sunday Times bestseller

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Stone Blind

By: Natalie Haynes

Narrated by: Natalie Haynes

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Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2023.

This audio edition is read by the author, Natalie Haynes.

In Stone Blind, the instant Sunday Times bestseller, Natalie Haynes brings the infamous Medusa to life as you have never seen her before.

'Witty, gripping, ruthless' – Margaret Atwood via X (Twitter)

‘So to mortal men, we are monsters. Because of our flight, our strength. They fear us, so they call us monsters’

Medusa is the sole mortal in a family of gods. Growing up with her Gorgon sisters, she begins to realize that she is the only one who experiences change, the only one who can be hurt.

When Poseidon commits an unforgiveable act against Medusa in the temple of Athene, the goddess takes her revenge where she can: on his victim. Medusa is changed forever – writhing snakes for hair and her gaze now turns any living creature to stone. She can look at nothing without destroying it.

Desperate to protect her beloved sisters, Medusa condemns herself to a life of shadows. Until Perseus embarks upon a quest to fetch the head of a Gorgon . . .

‘A fierce feminist exploration of female rage, written with wit and empathy’ – Glamour

'Natalie Haynes energizes the melodrama of ancient Greek gods with a divine level of storyteller’s flair . . . Listeners who enjoy transformative retellings of Greek myths will find much to relish in this production' - AudioFile

Natalie HaynesNatalie HaynesMantle

Ancient

Dragons & Mythical Creatures

Family Life

Fantasy

Fiction

Genre Fiction

Historical Fiction

Magic

Mythology

Funny

Heartfelt

Thought-Provoking

Witty

Greek Mythology

Ancient Greece

Ancient Dragons & Mythical Creatures Family Life Fantasy Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Magic Mythology Funny Heartfelt Thought-Provoking Witty Greek Mythology Ancient Greece

Critic reviews

Witty, gripping, ruthless (Margaret Atwood via X (Twitter))

The rollicking narrative voice that energises Stone Blind . . . is a voice that feels at once bitingly (post)modern and filled with old wisdom . . . The Gorgon’s head will take on a new and powerful resonance as a symbol of the way stories can be warped by time. Stone Blind acts as a brilliant and compellingly readable corrective.

Stone Blind is an exceptionally powerful retelling of Medusa's story, an emotional gut punch of a novel. Haynes brilliantly pulls off the feat of seamlessly alternating humour and heartbreak, creating characters that stay with you long after the novel's end. It is a dazzling achievement (Elodie Harper, author of The Wolf Den trilogy)

With this, her third novel based on ancient myth, [Haynes] has found a way of using all her classical erudition and her vivid sense of the ambiguous potency of the ancient stories, while being simultaneously very, very funny

A fierce feminist exploration of female rage, written with wit and empathy. Haynes makes the classics brutally relevant, and we reckon this one is going to be huge

It is no exaggeration to say that Haynes is the modern embodiment of the best of Homer. She is a proper, classic storyteller, whose linguistic skills and wit will have you hanging on every word

Stone Blind is inventive and playful . . . [and] very funny (Antonia Senior)

Pat Barker, Margaret Atwood and Madeline Miller have all successfully picked at the seams of the traditionally male take on these fantastic tales. But Natalie Haynes’s genius, this time with Stone Blind, her third Greek myth novel, is to not just focus on the female experience of Greek myth but also to add zest, humour and more than a little mischief . . . The ride is gripping, funny and heartbreaking. Love, sorrow, adventure and humour - Stone Blind has it all

What makes a monster is the central question in Natalie Haynes’ wry, spry feminist take on the Medusa myth . . . an earthy, playful yet rage-filled upending of the Greek hero trope

With wit, humanity and extraordinary imagination, Haynes breathes life and meaning into myths as she has done so brilliantly before (most famously with A Thousand Ships). She also shows that monsters can be divine or mortal. Not all heroes wear capes – and not all villains have snakes

Haynes’ clever, empathetic writing transforms Medusa from Gorgon into a girl, who’s a victim of the cruel machinations of the gods and of circumstance (Sarra Manning)

Natalie Haynes has made a contemporary classic out of a classic . . . and it should win prizes (Monique Roffey, author of The Mermaid of Black Conch)

There’s real tenderness in Haynes’s portrait of Medusa, a mortal abomination born into a family of divinities, and the efforts of her immortal Gorgon sisters to protect her from herself (Daisy Dunn)

Most relevant

Really enjoyed the book but just didn’t feel the author narrating the audiobook really engaged me. The author is very good when I have listened to them radio programmes, but here I felt they didn’t always convey the emotions of the characters at times, or it felt a bit ‘forced’. They actually were more engaging in the acknowledgements section at the end where there was more life and personality to their narration. I really liked the plot though. Chapter with the snakes speaking was a bit bizarre and not sure it added much.