Joel Agee

"Six-and-a-half-year-old Peter reads, dreams, and plays with his friends. He is a nascent explorer, artist, philosopher, mystic, and scientist...And the actual world around him is a unique one in history: a community of leftist emigrés who have found refuge in Mexico from the Nazi and fascist regimes of Europe...But the emigrés long for home...slowly, Peter begins to comprehend that his world may be turned upside down"--

Though it tells the stories of the defeated, Prometheus Bound and Other Plays features four tragedies that depict both unfortunate demises and the essence of the fighting human spirit. The Suppliants, the first play of the collection, follows the daughters of Danaus as they flee from the loveless marriages that had been forced upon them. The Persians, perhaps the oldest surviving play in existence, portrays the defeat of the Persian King Xeroxes....

The detective investigating a little girl's murder promises the child's mother that he will find the culprit, and his vow turns into an obsession that will take him into the depths of good and evil, crime and punishment.

"The world's greatest physicist, Johann Wilhelm Mobius, is in a madhouse, haunted by recurring visions of King Solomon. He is kept company by two other equally deluded scientists: one who thinks he is Einstein, another who believes he is Newton. It soon becomes evident, however, that these three are not as harmlessly lunatic as they appear. Are they, in fact, really mad? Or are they playing some murderous game, with the world as the stake? For Mobius...