"Fifty leading writers retell myths from around the world in this dazzling follow-up to the bestselling My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me Icarus flies once more. Aztec jaguar gods again stalk the earth. An American soldier designs a new kind of Trojan horse-his cremains in a bullet. Here, in compelling guise, are your favorite mythological figures-Narcissus and Echo, Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion and Galatea, even Argos, Odysseus's faithful dog-alongside characters from Indian, Punjabi, Inuit, and other traditions. Featuring talkative goats, a cat lady, a bird woman, a beer-drinking ogre, and a squid who falls in love with the sun, these are stories of boundless wonder and invention. If "xo" signals a goodbye, then xo Orpheus is a goodbye to an old way of mythmaking, a book that boldly heralds a new beginning for one of the world's oldest literary traditions"