Schlafes Bruder Schlafes Bruder Schlafes Bruder is a novel by the Austrian Robert Schneider. The book was first published in German in 1992. It was an international success and was adapted to a film and an opera, among others. The plot is set in an Austrian mountain village in the 19th century. The protagonists (Elias, Peter and Elsbeth) face hardship and fate that they cannot understand nor prevent. The title is derived from Greek mythology, where Hypnos, god of sleep, is the brother of Thanatos, god of death. A chorale which Bach set to conclude his cantata "Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne
The God Beneath the Sea throws Hephaestus for a second time from Olympus. Hephaestus lands on the isle of Lemnos and is nursed to health by the locals. He returns to Olympus and is greeted by Hermes. At the novel's conclusion, Autolycus muses in a letter to his daughter that his grandson Odysseus may one day visit the new city of Troy. Blishen and Garfield began work on "The God Beneath the Sea" after discovering that Greek mythology had had similar impacts on them as primary school children. In Blishen's words, "these stories seemed to illuminate, to make clear, what was going on around me