The Centaur

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The Centaur is a 1963 novel by John Updike. It won the National Book Award in 1964. The story concerns George Caldwell, a 1940s schoolteacher, and his son Peter. The two spend three days together in a snowstorm, revealing the relationship between father and son. The novel is interwoven with characters drawn from Greek mythology, the most important of these being the centaur Chiron and Prometheus. The novel also ponders the relationship between the heavens and the people on earth.

The character of Peter is similar to Updike himself; both had schoolteacher fathers, lived in rural Pennsylvania and suffered from psoriasis.

Portions of the novel first appeared in Esquire and The New Yorker.

Near the end of the book, Updike includes an untranslated Greek sentence. The translation is as follows: "Having an incurable wound, he delivered himself into the cave. Wanting, and being unable, to have an end, because he was immortal, [then with] Prometheus offering himself to Zeus to become immortal for him, thus he died."

This quote is from Apollodorus, Library and Epitome, 2.5.4, and describes the death of Chiron.