Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles is a novel adaptation of Homer’s Iliad from the perspective of Patroclus, Achilles’ best friend and lover, from their time as young princes to Achilles’ ultimate death in the climactic battle of the Trojan War.
While the events of the novel largely align with those depicted in the Iliad, Miller describes Patroclus’s vision of the world as inspired by ancient lyric poetry, more in line with Catullus and Sappho than with Homer’s epic narration. Patroclus is exiled from his home and raised in Phthia alongside Achilles, the god-born prince who will become Aristos Achaion, the greatest of the Greeks. Over the course of their studies and exploits, the boys become lovers against the will of Achilles’ mother, Thetis. Achilles is fated to die in the Trojan War after killing the Trojan prince Hector, and as the two men both prepare for and avoid that fate, Patroclus and Achilles develop an intimacy that the novel depicts as stronger than death.
The novel became a New York Times bestseller and was released to critical acclaim, with The Guardian calling it "more poetic than almost all translations of Homer." Some, however, criticized the novel for its emphasis on romance, comparing it unfavorably to young-adult fiction. The Song of Achilles won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2012 and was shortlisted for the Stonewall Book Award, establishing Miller’s reputation as an author of both scholarly and pleasurable reading, a reputation continued by her second novel, Circe, an adaptation of elements of Homer’s Odyssey.
