The Song of Achilles

“This is by Madeline Miller who is an American academic. It was her debut novel and it won the Orange Prize. For some reason I came across it when it first came out, before anyone else knew about it, and I absolutely loved it. I really appreciated the deft, spare beauty of the writing and I like the way it came at the story from Patroclus’s point of view. I loved the richness of the language, the descriptions. She really made me feel I was in ancient Greece — the smells, the whole environment.” Read more...

The best books on Greek Myths

Lucy Coats, Children's Author

“It is a novelisation of that, told in the first person by Patroclus – which among other things is difficult technically, because Patroclus dies in book 16 but the story goes beyond that. So at a certain point you’re wondering, as a reader, how this guy is talking. Another problem is that the book unbelievably trivialises the spirit of the original. I’ll never forget when, as an undergraduate, a professor whom I greatly admired told me after something silly I had said that “the classics is serious business”. I don’t want to know what Achilles did in bed, frankly. If you want to play with the big boys, fine, but don’t turn The Iliad into a Twilight novel.” Read more...

Daniel Mendelsohn on Updating the Classics (of Greek and Roman Literature)

Daniel Mendelsohn, Memoirist