The Song of Achilles
Madeline Miller (2011)
“Homer's Iliad retold through the eyes of the boy who loved Achilles — and paid everything for it.”
Why This Book Matters
Won the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction — one of literary fiction's most prestigious awards — on its first publication, the first novel about ancient Greece to win in the prize's history. Became a bestseller a decade after publication through TikTok's BookTok community rediscovering it, demonstrating how literary fiction can find massive popular audiences through community recommendation rather than traditional marketing. Now regularly appears on high school and college reading lists alongside Homer.
Firsts & Innovations
First novel to win the Orange Prize for Fiction set in ancient Greece
One of the earliest major literary novels to present the Achilles-Patroclus relationship as explicitly romantic without hedging or historical disclaimer
One of the first books to break out as a mainstream bestseller through TikTok's BookTok community (2021-2022), five years after its initial publication
Cultural Impact
Renewed popular interest in Homeric epic, driving new translations and retellings
Became a gateway text for young readers into classical mythology and ancient literature
Its emotional directness influenced a generation of mythological retellings published in the 2010s and 2020s
Frequently cited in discussions of LGBTQ representation in literary fiction and in classics scholarship about the Achilles-Patroclus relationship
Miller's follow-up novel Circe (2018) extended the same approach to a female figure from the Odyssey, demonstrating the viability of the sympathetic mythological-retelling form
Banned & Challenged
Has appeared on challenged books lists in school districts that object to its depiction of a same-sex relationship between Achilles and Patroclus, despite the relationship being drawn directly from the oldest texts in Western literature. The irony — that a book set in ancient Greece is challenged for content Homer himself implied — is frequently noted.