Sarah Crossan has lived in Dublin, London and New York, and now lives in Brighton. She graduated with a degree in philosophy and literature before training as an English and drama teacher at Cambridge University. Crossan has won many international awards for her verse novels, including the CILIP Carnegie Medal, the CBI Book of Year award and the CLiPPA Poetry Award.
Here Is the Beehive is her first novel for adults.
At the Guardian, Crossan tagged ten of her favorite verse novels, including:
The Iliad by Homer, translated by Robert FaglesRead about another entry on the list.
I have had this translation on my bookshelf for years, and I suppose I thought that if it remained there, a couple of Post-it notes in its pages, I could pretend to myself and othersthat I had read it in its entirety. But I had not, and am ashamed to admit I did not finally succumb until I was overwhelmed by the The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker. The story opens near the end of the 10-year war between the Greeks and Trojans, men and Gods battling for power, the legend of Achilles at its core. And this translation is entirely modern, with helpful footnotes throughout, so you won’t need a PhD to understand it. May take longer than a couple of sittings, however!
The Iliad also appears on Maaza Mengiste's top ten list of books about the human cost of war, Ani Katz's top ten list of books about toxic masculinity, John Gittings's list of five top books on peace, Becky Ferreira's list of her seven favorite tales of revenge in literature, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five books on the Olympians, Madeline Miller's list of ten favorite classical works, Bettany Hughes's six best books list, James Anderson Winn's five best list of works of war poetry, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best funerals in literature and ten of the best examples of ekphrasis. It is one of Karl Marlantes's top ten war stories.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
