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Review Quotes:
Original, thought-provoking, and utterly absorbing... [An] inventive novel about a classics scholar who makes a thrilling discovery.--Kristine Huntley, Booklist, starred review
Brief Description:
"The most famous stories of the Trojan War and its aftermath are Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. But these were not the only tales of the war sung to ancient audiences by bards-there were others, now vanished but for echoes and fragments, collected in what has come to be known as the Epic Cycle. In SON OF NOBODY, one such tale is the Psoad: an epic that follows the son of a goatherd, Psoas of Midea, who leaves his wife and family to fight on the beaches of Troy. Psoas meets his doom, and the epic poem of his life is lost to time-until another man on a foreign shore, a Canadian academic studying at Oxford, discovers its relics thirty centuries later. A truly daring feat of imagination, SON OF NOBODY is a novel composed in two voices: the first, a series of fragments from antiquity that tell the story of Troy from a lost, alt-Homeric tradition; the second, the voice of a modern-day scholar, Harlow Donne, who assembles and comments on these fragments while navigating a conflict of his own. Obsessed with his discovery, Donne still can't seem to let go of his family's past-he weaves together the tale of uncovering ancient papyri, faded codices, and broken cuneiform tablets with memories of his daughter as a child and his wife before their separation. Donne translates and writes in the heartfelt modes of Aphrodite, goddess of love, and Ares, god of war, as the paralell stories offer a poignant glimpse into both the follies of failed relationships and of battle. SON OF NOBODY upends the regal perspective of traditional epics, and by grappling with questions of ambition, family, and responsibility in both the ancient and the modern worlds, it shows "that the past is never done with, that always there are parallels and returns and repetitions, always the song continues.""-- Provided by publisher.
Review Quotes:
Ingenious... Martel bring[s] a witty freshness to standard elements of Homeric narrative.--Daniel Mendelsohn, New York Times Book Review, cover review
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An epic challenge... Martel's ambition is amply matched by his craft. There is much to delight.--Nilanjana Roy "Financial Times"
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An expansive double narrative... Appeal[s] to a range of readers.--Kate Tuttle "Boston Globe"
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Extraordinary... Martel wraps an Everyman and a scholar in an epic tale.--Sky Davis "Christian Science Monitor"
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A singular tour de force... Reading this book was both brain-busting and beautiful.--Cheryl Pearl Sucher "New Zealand Listener"
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A brilliant novel of ideas. . . . A powerful meditation on life, death, and the vanity of human wishes, all illustrated by a poem that would do Homer proud. A stunningly imagined revisitation of an ancient past.--Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Review Quotes:
Inspired... An appealing labor of love.-- "Publishers Weekly"
Publisher Marketing:
The Psoad is an Ancient Greek epic in free verse that follows a goatherd's son, Psoas of Midea, who leaves his wife and family to fight with the Greeks at Troy. This commoner's story was lost to time--until Harlow Donne, a Canadian academic who has left his own wife and daughter behind to study at Oxford, discovers its relics nearly thirty centuries later.
As sole translator and interpreter of The Psoad, Harlow dedicates the poem and its footnotes to his daughter, Helen. Under his gaze, a personal message to his beloved child appears in the ancient text, like a palimpsest. Despite the thousands of years and hundreds of miles that separate Psoas and Harlow, a thread hasn't frayed: the universal song of homesickness and regret, of love, ambition, and grief.
Son of Nobody takes readers from the plains of Troy to the halls of Oxford, from the classical to the contemporary, from ancient verses to modern footnotes. It is a dazzling, masterful feat of myth, history, and domesticity that explores how stories become facts, the price we pay to share them, and how we live--then, now, always.
Review Citations:
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Kirkus Reviews 01/15/2026 (EAN 9781324118138, Hardcover) - *Starred Review
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Booklist 02/01/2026 (EAN 9781324118138, Hardcover) - *Starred Review
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Shelf Awareness 12/30/0001 (EAN 9781324118138, Hardcover)
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Publishers Weekly 01/05/2026 (EAN 9781324118138, Hardcover)
Contributor Bio:Martel, Yann
Yann Martel is the author of
Life of Pi, the international bestseller that won the 2002 Booker Prize and was adapted to the screen in the Oscar-winning film by Ang Lee. He lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
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