A Hungry Fire - by Élyssa Marcoux-Bissoondath (Paperback)

About the Book

Modern Dido strives to be as fearsome as her namesake, the legendary Queen Dido of Carthage, but she's troubled by unexplained chronic pain, and her Aeneas is not a lover but a gynecologist. Filtering a life-long pursuit of diagnosis through Vergil's Aeneid, Dido brandishes a wonky speculum aloft and demands answers from the gods.

Book Synopsis

After Queen Dido, founder of the great city of Carthage, was abandoned by her lover, the Trojan prince Aeneas, she asserted her power by choosing the method by which she would die. Stabbing herself atop a funeral pyre with a gifted sword, she sealed a curse on his descendants for generations to come.

Her twenty-first-century namesake, however, doesn't want her life to end in flames. She needs answers.

Since encountering Vergil's Aeneid in the paintings of a childhood book, modern-day Dido has strived to be as fearsome as her ancient counterpart. A driven and artistic civil engineer who dreams of designing her own Carthage, she navigates the thirteen-year pursuit of a diagnosis for her chronic pelvic pains, processing her struggles through the lens of the Roman epic. Princes and gods become doctors and protectors who follow her through countless tests, educated guesses, medications, and invasive procedures. Her Aeneas is not a runaway lover but an eminent gynecologist.

Through the ages, muses have sung of the rage of Achilles and the cunning of Odysseus. Now, with acerbic humour, they bear witness for a modern audience to the wrath of Dido as she waves a wonky speculum aloft.

Review Quotes

"With trademark wit and deft prose, Élyssa Marcoux-Bissoondath's A Hungry Fire breathes quirky new life into timeless narratives, carrying the reader along with Dido as she navigates the world of chronic pain with heroic grace. Here, new mythologies emerge through the alchemical blending of ancient and contemporary, and the human transformation that can occur when we dare challenge and change what has always been the norm. Ambitious and masterfully told, A Hungry Fire cannot leave the reader anything but changed, and for the better."--Brent van Staalduinen, author of The Peace Thieves

"Original, thought-provoking, and emotionally resonant. It sheds light on an experience that deserves to be heard and proves that some of the oldest stories can still resonate powerfully with the world we live in today."--@crystallreads "Instagram"