The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, 2012 (now known as the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction) and the Stonewall Barbara Gittings Literature Award, 2013, The Song of Achilles is a beautifully-crafted novel based on Homer’s timeless tale of the Trojan War, The Illiad. Author Madeline Miller, a Classics graduate of Brown University, focuses upon the doomed relationship between the Greek warrior Achilles, son of Thetis, and his devoted companion and lover, Patroclus. Narrator Patroclus describes their passionate bond in language that is both lyrical and mesmerizing: from their first encounter, to their woodland tutelage by the Chiron the Centaur, to their story’s tragic conclusion outside the walls of Troy. The arresting imagery and fully realized exploration of their relationship brings a compelling freshness to this ancient epic of love and war.