Showing results for "The Iliad" in Historical Fiction

One of the foremost achievements in Western literature, Homer's Iliad tells the story of the darkest episode in the Trojan War. At its center is Achilles, the greatest warrior-champion of the Greeks, and his refusal to fight after being humiliated by his leader, Agamemnon.

Originally meant to be heard rather than read, this great epic returns to the oral form for today's listeners.

Achilles has fled her home and her vicious Myrmidon clan to live as a woman with the kallai, the transgender priestesses of Great Mother Aphrodite. When Odysseus comes to recruit the “prince” Achilles for a war against the Hittites, she prepares to die rather than fight as a man. However, her divine mother, Athena, intervenes, transforming her body into the woman’s body she always longed for, and promises her everything: glory, power, fame, victory in war, and, most importantly, a child born of her own body.

Here is a brilliant recounting of the life of Odysseus after his safe return to the island of Ithaca, his wife Penelope, and his son Telemachus. Countless readers and listeners have thrilled to the adventures of Odysseus in The Iliad and The Odyssey, but what further adventures awaited him after his ten years of war and ten years of wandering? Narrated by Telemachus to the bard Phemios, On Wine-Dark Seas speaks of the human drama of a man gone twenty years from home and family, a man who saw Troy on the night of its destruction, a man who lives the special quest which is his destiny.

Paris, son of King Priam and who is madly in love with Helen, escapes with her. Menelaus, former husband of Helen, blinded by jealousy and lust for revenge, will declare war on Troy. It will be the beginning of a ruinous tragedy that will last 10 years. Around this central nucleus, infinite events come to life that are linked by invisible fate, now tangling, now dissolving.