Head of Zeus opened for business on 3 January 2012 and we published our first books in July 2012. Our list is a mix of general and literary fiction, genre fiction and non fiction. We are also the UK and Commonwealth distributors for MysteriousPress.com, one of the world's largest digital crime fiction lists. Our name is not a tribute to Zeus himself but to his daughter Athene, the grey-eyed goddes
s of wisdom, later known to the Romans as Minerva. According to Greek myth, Zeus, an incorrigible philanderer, is told by one of his many girlfriends that she is pregnant. He thereupon swallows her in order to conceal the evidence of his infidelity from his long-suffering wife Hera. But the unborn child, unlike her unfortunate mother, is immortal. In due course Athene is delivered, fully formed and armour clad, from a cyst on her father's head, and adopted as their patron deity, first by the citizens of Athens and latterly by a nascent publishing enterprise in Clerkenwell Green. It makes a beautiful colophon. Ours is adapted from a sixth century BCE Athenian four drachma silver coin which I bought from Messrs Spink in Southampton Row. The owl is not just a symbol of wisdom but a much-loved creature found in more than 400 species across the nocturnal planet. So there you have it. Yes, it is pretentious, grandiose and fanciful, perhaps even ludicrous, especially for a toddler of a publishing house like ourselves. You have to start somewhere, and there's no harm in setting your sights on Olympus. Twitter:
Instagram:
