Christopher Nolan’s retelling of The Odyssey recently hit the cinemas, so we’re sharing some of our favourite stories inspired by the original Homeric epic!
Take a look at these recommended books, all free to borrow with your library card.
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Homer’s Odyssey: Epic Tales of Conquest & Empire
Jake Jackson
One of the great epics of Western literature, Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ covers the events after the Trojan War as Odysseus travels home, encountering many strange monsters and creatures along the way.
Featuring numerous figures of ancient Greek mythology, Homer’s epic poem is one of the world’s oldest surviving literary works and preserves various aspects of ancient Greek beliefs and culture for the modern reader.
From fearsome giants to a cunning sorceress, Odysseus must confront peril after peril, all the while wondering if the path of his fate ever leads homeward, and if his wife Penelope and son Telemachus remain safe.
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Heroes
Stephen Fry
Few mere mortals have ever embarked on such bold and heart-stirring adventures, overcome myriad monstrous perils, or outwitted scheming vengeful gods, quite as stylishly and triumphantly as Greek heroes.
Join Jason aboard the Argo as he quests for the Golden Fleece. See Atalanta – who was raised by bears – outrun any man before being tricked with golden apples. Witness wily Oedipus solve the riddle of the Sphinx and discover how Bellerophon captures the winged horse Pegasus to help him slay the monster Chimera.
Troy
Stephen Fry
The stage is set for the oldest and greatest story ever told, where monstrous passions meet the highest ideals and the lowest cunning.
In Troy you will find heroism and hatred, revenge and regret, desire and despair. It is these human passions, written bloodily in the sands of a distant shore, that still speak to us today.
Troy is a myth in which we seek the truth about ourselves, which Stephen Fry brings breathtakingly to life for our modern age.
Circe
Madeline Miller
In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe has neither the look nor the voice of divinity, and is scorned and rejected by her kin. Increasingly isolated, she turns to mortals for companionship, leading her to discover a power forbidden to the gods: witchcraft.
When love drives Circe to cast a dark spell, wrathful Zeus banishes her to the remote island of Aiaia. There she learns to harness her occult craft, drawing strength from nature.
But she will not always be alone; many are destined to pass through Circe’s place of exile, entwining their fates with hers. The messenger god, Hermes. The craftsman, Daedalus. A ship bearing a golden fleece. And wily Odysseus, on his epic voyage home.
The Women of Troy
Pat Barker
Troy has fallen. The Greeks have won their bitter war. They can return home victors, loaded with their spoils: their stolen gold, stolen weapons, stolen women. All they need is a good wind to lift their sails.
But the wind does not come. The gods have been offended – the body of Priam lies desecrated, unburied – and so the victors remain in limbo, camped in the shadow of the city they destroyed, pacing at the edge of an unobliging sea. And, in these empty, restless days, the hierarchies that held them together begin to fray, old feuds resurface and new suspicions fester.
Largely unnoticed by her squabbling captors, Briseis remains in the Greek encampment. She forges alliances where she can – with young, dangerously naive Amina, with defiant, aged Hecuba, with Calchus, the disgraced priest – and begins to see the path to a kind of revenge.
Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myths
Natalie Haynes
Natalie Haynes, author of ‘Pandora’s Jar’, returns to the world of Greek myth and this time she examines the role of the goddesses.
We meet Athene, who sprang fully formed from her father’s head: goddess of war and wisdom, guardian of Athens. We run with Artemis, goddess of hunting and protector of young girls (apart from those she decides she wants as a sacrifice). Here is Aphrodite, goddess of sex and desire – there is no deity more determined and able to make you miserable if you annoy her.
And then there’s the queen of all the Olympian gods: Hera, Zeus’s long-suffering wife, whose jealousy of his dalliances with mortals, nymphs and goddesses lead her to wreak elaborate, vicious revenge on those who have wronged her.
Daughters of Sparta
Claire Heywood
For millennia, two women have been blamed for the fall of a mighty civilisation – but now it’s time to hear their side of the story.
As princesses of Sparta, Helen and Klytemnestra have known nothing but luxury and plenty. With their high birth and unrivalled beauty, they are the envy of all of Greece. Such privilege comes at a high price, though, and their destinies are not theirs to command.
While still only girls they are separated and married off to legendary foreign kings Agamemnon and Menelaos, never to meet again. Their duty is now to give birth to the heirs society demands and be the meek, submissive queens their men expect.
But when the weight of their husbands’ neglect, cruelty and ambition becomes too heavy to bear, they must push against the constraints of their sex to carve new lives for themselves – and in doing so make waves that will ripple throughout the next three thousand years.
Ithaca
Claire North
17 years ago, King Odysseus sailed to war with Troy, taking with him every man of fighting age. None of them have returned to Ithaca, and the women have been left to run the kingdom. Penelope was barely into womanhood when she wed Odysseus.
Whilst he lived, her position was secure. But now, speculation is mounting that her husband is dead, and suitors are starting to knock at her door. Between Penelope’s many suitors, a cold war of dubious alliances and hidden knives reigns, as everyone waits for the balance of power to tip one way or another.
Only through cunning and her spy network of maids can she maintain the delicate balance of power needed for the kingdom to survive. On Ithaca, everyone watches everyone else, and there is no corner of the palace where intrigue does not reign.
A Thousand Ships
Natalie Haynes
In the middle of the night, Creusa wakes to find her beloved Troy engulfed in flames. Ten seemingly endless years of brutal conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans are over, and the Greeks are victorious.
Over the next few hours, the only life she has ever known will turn to ash. The devastating consequences of the fall of Troy stretch from Mount Olympus to Mount Ida, from the citadel of Troy to the distant Greek islands, and across oceans and sky in between.
These are the stories of the women embroiled in that legendary war and its terrible aftermath, as well as the feud and the fatal decisions that started it all.
The Penelopiad
Margaret Atwood
Penelope. Immortalised in legend and myth as the devoted wife of the glorious Odysseus, silently weaving and unpicking and weaving again as she waits for her husband’s return.
Now Penelope wanders the underworld, spinning a different kind of thread: her own side of the story – a tale of lust, greed and murder.
With wit and verve, drawing on the storytelling and poetic talent for which she herself is renowned, Atwood gives Penelope, wife of Odysseus and cousin of the beautiful Helen of Troy, new life and reality – and sets out to provide an answer to an ancient mystery.
House of Names
Colm Tóibín
On the day of his daughter’s wedding, Agamemnon orders her sacrifice. His daughter is led to her death, and Agamemnon leads his army into battle, where he is rewarded with glorious victory.
Three years later, he returns home and his murderous action has set the entire family – mother, brother, sister – on a path of intimate violence, as they enter a world of hushed commands and soundless journeys through the palace’s dungeons and bedchambers.
As his wife seeks his death, his daughter, Electra, is the silent observer to the family’s game of innocence while his son, Orestes, is sent into bewildering, frightening exile where survival is far from certain.
Clytemnestra
Costanza Casati
Huntress. Warrior. Mother. Murderess. Queen. You are born to a king, but marry a tyrant. You stand helplessly as he sacrifices your child to placate the gods. You watch him wage war on a foreign shore and comfort yourself with violent thoughts of your own. You play the part, fooling enemies who deny you justice. Slowly, you plot.
You are Clytemnestra. But when the husband who owns you returns in triumph, what then? Acceptance or vengeance – infamy follows both. So you bide your time and wait, until you might force the gods’ hands and take revenge. Until you rise. For you understood something that the others don’t.
A blazing novel set in the world of Ancient Greece and told through the eyes of its greatest female protagonist, this is a thrilling tale of power and prophecies, of hatred, love, and of an unforgettable Queen who fiercely dealt out death to those who wronged her.
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