麻豆约拍

Richard House is a writer, artist, and senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham. He is a member of the Chicago-based collaborative, Haha, whose work has appeared at the New Museum, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Venice Biennale. His recent novel, 'The Kills', was longlisted for the Man Booker, and shortlisted for the Sky Arts South Bank Award, the GC Prize, and the Gordon Burn Prize.

I read the Odyssey as a boy, a version which omitted the Underworld section in which Odysseus summons the dead through blood rites and sacrifice. In this section he seeks advice on why he has not been able to return home, and what he needs to do to achieve this. More significantly, he learns of the death of his mother, and has difficult encounters with the dead from Troy - most notably Achilles. It is the most remarkable episode in the entire narrative, not only is it spectacular (the way in which the ghosts must be summoned to a trench of blood), but it threatens to undermine not only the Odyssey, but the Iliad. Achilles is clear - all of this slaughter, all of this war, and what was it for? In my version I have a character called Buzz returning home to Birmingham from Laos, which, like Troy, has suffered sustained assault. From 1964 through till 1973 over 270 million cluster bombs were dropped on the Plain of Jars. That's the equivalent of one B-52 bomb-load every 8 minutes for 9 years. Over one third of these bombs did not detonate, and are still, even now, causing injury and retarding economic development. Buzz has his own history, we meet him on his last night in Laos. He's burdened by events that have occurred during his time as a volunteer, and troubled by his earlier volunteering for people with HIV/AIDS. Much of this will be developed in a longer narrative. It has been useful to look for commonalities: an absence, an isolated man, a return home, blood, a trench, the presence of the dead, the need to confront a past in order to move forward. Like聽Odysseus, Buzz has questions. Unlike聽Odysseus, he does not want to return home, and his dead refuse to speak - but they need to be challenged.

Richard House's聽Underworld聽is one of three stories adapted for 麻豆约拍 Radio聽4's聽Shorts: Writing West聽from the short story collection聽A Midlands Odyssey, commissioned by Writing West Midlands and published by Nine Arches Press in October 2014. The editors of the anthology were Polly Stoker, Elisabeth Charis and Jonathan Davidson.