The Song of Achilles, by Madeline MillerRead about another entry on the list.
The Achilles of Homer’s The Iliad wept for days over his comrade Patroclus’s corpse, refusing to let it be buried. Miller, a scholar of classical literature, takes that tiny detail and uses it to re-imagine the hero of the Trojan War as a man in love with his best friend and most faithful ally. This intimate, romantic story reveals more about soldiers, lovers, and queer couples than most of the classic literature combined, yet sticks close to the historical and literary context on which it’s based. Miller’s fresh look at this epic poem has inspired many other fiction writers to write about ancient works, but sometimes we all know that the first entry is the best entry.
The Song of Achilles is among Mark Skinner's nineteen top Greek myth retellings, Alexia Casale's top eight titles sparked by the authors' work life, Allison Epstein's eight queer historical fiction books set around the world, Phong Nguyen's seven titles that live halfway between history & myth, The Center for Fiction's 200 books that shaped two centuries of literature, Sara Stewart's six best books and Nicole Hill's fourteen characters who should have lived.
My Book, The Movie: The Song of Achilles.
--Marshal Zeringue