The tragedy of Oedipus is precipitated by his unwitting marriage to his mother, Jocasta. Brian Aldiss's psychological novel re-examines the entire Oedipus drama from Jocasta's point of view. At first, the minor vexations in her comfortable family life include having a Sphinx roaming the Theban palace, and dealing with her old grandmother, Semele, a relic of the Bronze Age who still practices magic. Gradually, however, the falsity of Jocasta’s position becomes apparent. The oracle of the gods proves inescapable. Nemesis follows.

In Jocasta, Brian Aldiss brings vividly to life the ancient world of dreaming Thebes: a world of sun-drenched landscapes, golden dust, sphynxes, Furies, hermaphroditic philosophers, ghostly apparitions and ambivalent gods. Jocasta is also a strikingly effective contemplation of an older world order where the human mind is still struggling to understand itself and the nature of the world around it; for in Jocasta’s world the human mind is on the cusp of completing its emergence from the slumber of precivilisation to that of modernity.