Canongate Books

Son of Nobody - Yann Martel

THE READS TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN 2026 - TimesBOOKS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2026 - Guardian2026 FICTION HIGHLIGHTS - ObserverWHAT TO READ IN 2026 - Financial TimesBOOKS YOU NEED TO READ IN 2026 - BBC CultureTHE MOST HYPED BOOKS WE CAN'T WAIT TO READ IN 2026 - Elle MagazineThe past is never done with: always the song continues Harlow Donne has devoted his life to the Classical world. When a chance comes up to study an obscure collection of papyrus fragments at Oxford University, he seizes it. Though it means leaving his daughter and fracturing marriage back home in Canada, this is the kind of career break he desperately needs. In the depths of the Bodleian Library, Harlow discovers a lost account of the Trojan War, a glimpse into the founding of Western civilization itself. He names the epic poem The Psoad, after its protagonist, a Greek commoner identified as Psoas of Midea but known to all as 'son of nobody'. As sole translator and interpreter of the Psoad, Harlow dedicates the poem and its modern footnotes to his daughter, Helen. Under his gaze, the text unlocks echoes of Ancient Greece into the present day, and a personal message to his beloved child appears. Despite the three-thousand-year gap between the two, a thread hasn't frayed: the universal song of homesickness and regret, of ambition and grief. In this masterpiece of myth and history, Son of Nobody explores how stories become facts, the price we pay to share them and how we live - then, now and always.

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