Ragnarök: The End of the Gods is A.S. Byatt’s contribution to the Canongate Myths series, a collection that includes retellings by Margaret Atwood, Jeanette Winterson, Philip Pullman, and others. Byatt’s book takes up the Norse myths which have always fascinated her, and which have appeared briefly in some of her previous fiction as a topic of fascination for her characters. Here she brings them to her readers through a nameless main character, “the thin child,” who reads about them during WWII in England (the setting, like the thin child, is only barely sketched out). Ragnarök is also a war story — one in which, as the title suggests, nothing survives.
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