Presents the third of the three Theban plays by Sophocles in a contemporary translation that remains true to the text, setting the plays in the past yet not the distant past and dispensing with the masks. This final segment of the trilogy centers around the conflict between moral and political law, as the tale of Oedipus and his family comes to a tragic end.

In this innovative rendition of The Oresteia, the poet, translator, and essayist Anne Carson combines three different visions -- Aischylos' Agamemnon, Sophokles' Elektra, and Euripides' Orestes, giving birth to a wholly new experience of the classic Greek triumvirate of vengeance. Carson's accomplished rendering combines elements of contemporary vernacular with the traditional structures and rhetoric of Greek tragedy, opening up the plays to a modern...