Womens Prize For Fiction Winner

The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

Summary

Miller retells the Iliad through the devoted love between Achilles and Patroclus, from boyhood exile to the killing fields of Troy. She gives Homer's heroes interior lives and a tenderness that makes their doom unbearable, blending classical scholarship with emotional immediacy. The novel found a vast new readership and helped spark a wave of feminist myth retellings.

Historical Context & Significance

Madeline Miller spent ten years writing her debut, drawing on her training as a teacher of Latin and Greek.