Andrew Lang's novel "Tales of Troy: Ulysses, the Sacker of Cities" commemorates the life of the legendary King of Ithaca who is the central figure in Homer's epic poem 'The Odyssey'. Son of Laërtes and Anticlea, husband of Penelope, and father of Telemachus, Acusilaus, and Telegonus. Ulysses (or in Greek Odysseus) is renowned for his intellectual brilliance, guile, and versatility, and is thus known by the epithet 'Odysseus the Cunning'. The novel captures his early life as a prince of Ithaca, his marriage to Penelope and exploits as a soldier. The tale of his reluctance and subsequent ploy to avoid being conscripted into the Greek-Trojan War, and the dramatic events that forced him to battle. And of course his decade long homecoming after the War that is the subject of "The Odyssey".