Orpheus Lost

In this powerful and passionate new novel, Janette Turner Hospital tackles head-on questions of national security, art, terrorism, and love.

Leela is a mathematician who has escaped her Southern hometown to study in Boston. She meets an Australian musician, Mishka, and from the moment she first hears him play his music grips her; they quickly become lovers.

One day Leela is picked up off the street and taken to an interrogation center somewhere outside the city. There has been an explosion in the subway; terrorism is suspected. The interrogator―an old childhood friend―now reveals to her that Mishka may not be all he seems.

In this compelling reimagining of the Orpheus story, Leela travels into an underworld of kidnapping, torture, and despair in search of her lover.