*A Thousand Ships* — Natalie Haynes
Natalie Haynes in general! Stone Blind, No Friend to This House, and her essay collections are great too.
Just saw Nolan's Odyssey yesterday, loved it, and it got me thinking that while I have a strong background in Classics, read ancient Greek etc., I've barely engaged with modern literary adaptations of Greek mythology. The only one I've read that I can recall is Circe by Madeline Miller, which I loved.
I know this has become something of a hot genre in recent years, so while I can easily find lists or whatever online would love to get slightly more curated recommendations here! Open to any and all suggestions, with the caveat that I'm looking for: (a) adult fiction (so no Percy Jackson or similar please), and (b) stuff that falls broadly under a "literary fiction" heading, with an emphasis on good prose (which isn't necessarily flowery or ornate prose, to be clear).
*A Thousand Ships* — Natalie Haynes
Natalie Haynes in general! Stone Blind, No Friend to This House, and her essay collections are great too.
The King Must Die & The Bull From the Sea by Mary Renault
If you enjoyed Circe, have you read Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles? Also highly recommend The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker.
If you enjoyed Circe, have you read Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles?
Not yet but it's been on my radar. Will check out Silence of the Girls, thank you!
Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati is very good.
"I Sing of Grief" and "I Sing of Rebirth" by Michael Fridgen - excellent novels from the last few years which depict the Trojan War and the Aeneid. There i more of a LGBT focus (well, G) in these novels depicting the role of gay men in these wars.
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood is a retelling of The Odyssey from Penelope’s POV (and the 12 maids).
The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes House of Names by Colm Tóibín The Hymn to Dionysus by Natasha Pulley Not exactly a retelling, but I’d also recommend Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon if you like Euripides.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke is loosely based on Greek mythology. Loved it.
No, not really
*Til We Have Faces* by CS Lewis is strange and haunting.
City on Fire by Don Winslow is a reimagining of the Iliad set in the 1980s about two crime families.
James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Wearing the lion by John Wiswell
Madeline Miller's a good start. Also, I think Dark Olympus by Kate Roberts (I've only heard of this one in passing though). You can also try the musical 'Epic' for non-book ssuggestions (it's awesome).
Playwright Marina Carr has done several retellings of Greek myth/tragedy in her plays, particularly By the Bog of Cats, Phaedra Backwards, and Girl on an Altar. Laird Hunt's Neverhome is a gender-flipped Odyssey retelling set in the Civil War. Poets Michael Longley and Louise Gluck both engaged extensively with the Odyssey in their own poetry. Alice Oswald did a "version" of the Iliad in which she translated only the deaths and the epic similes.
Theodore Kallifatides also engages the Iliad in his novel The Fall of Troy, in which a teacher retells (and substantially revises) the story to her students during the Nazi occupation of Greece in WWII. A. G. Lombardo has a retelling called Graffiti Palace which is set in LA during the Watts riots.