Clytemnestra

Clytemnestra is a sweeping, visceral reimagining of the most feared queen of the ancient world—long reduced to a villain’s outline. Costanza Casati invites us inside the chambers, training yards, and war-lit courts where Clytemnestra’s fate was forged. We follow a Spartan girl who protects her sisters in the sand, falls in love with a foreign king, becomes a mother, and then has everything taken from her by men who call cruelty destiny. Across weddings made by force and wars dressed as honor, she learns what power costs—and what justice requires.

This 30-minute narrative cuts a clean path through the novel’s most gripping turns: the fierce bond with Helen, the forbidden joy with Tantalus, the priestess’s prophecy, the arrival of the Atreidai, the slaughter at Aulis, and the long, cold planning that ends when the lion of Mycenae comes home. It’s a story about survival without apology, vengeance without disguise, and the strange, steady courage it takes to stand in the fire and not look away.

• Fans of myth retellings who want a fierce, grounded heroine in full complexity
• Listeners who enjoy political intrigue, war-time stakes, and intimate character drama
• Book clubs ready to debate vengeance, agency, and what justice looks like when the law fails

Costanza Casati was born in Texas, raised in Italy, and studied ancient Greek and classical literature before earning a writing degree in the UK. A journalist and screenwriter, she brings the pulse of lived detail to legendary figures, sharpening myth into vivid, human story. Clytemnestra is her debut novel.