The Song of Achilles (2011)
The Song of Achilles is a 2011 trojan war book written by Madeline Miller.
Patroclus is an awkward, exiled prince with little to recommend him, sent away to the court of Peleus, where he crosses paths with the king's golden son. Achilles is everything Patroclus is not: beautiful, fast, half-divine, marked from birth for glory. Madeline Miller follows the two boys from that first meeting into their training under the centaur Chiron and toward the long war gathering across the sea at Troy. She tells all of it in Patroclus's own voice, giving the familiar legend an intimate, tender pulse. This is a story less about the clash of armies than about the bond tying one ordinary man to a hero.
Quick answers
What is The Song of Achilles about?
Patroclus is an awkward, exiled prince with little to recommend him, sent away to the court of Peleus, where he crosses paths with the king's golden son. Achilles is everything Patroclus is not: beautiful, fast, half-divine, marked from birth for glory. Madeline Miller follows the two boys from that first meeting into their training under the centaur Chiron and toward the long war gathering across the sea at Troy. She tells all of it in Patroclus's own voice, giving the familiar legend an intimate, tender pulse. This is a story less about the clash of armies than about the bond tying one ordinary man to a hero.
When was The Song of Achilles published?
The Song of Achilles was published in 2011.
Who made The Song of Achilles?
The Song of Achilles was written by Madeline Miller.
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Explore The Song of Achilles guides
The Song of Achilles in our writing
- Companion guide: Ancient Greece
- Companion guide: Greek Mythology
A few thoughts on The Song of Achilles
For the same doomed devotion, the manga Kaze Hikaru follows a young woman who binds herself to a swordsman and his cause through a violent chapter of history, all loyalty and unspoken longing. On film, Wolfgang Petersen's Troy stages the same siege at spectacle scale, though Madeline Miller keeps her focus far closer, on the two men at the war's quiet center.
War stories about comrades bound together facing a doomed fight
The Song of Achilles gives the Iliad an intimate pulse, following two men whose bond has to survive a war. These films carry the same weight of loyalty under a death sentence, from the siege of Troy to the last stands of 7-Man Army, The Dawns Here Are Quiet, Counter-Attack, and Scott of the Antarctic.
Greek and mythic legends retold as sweeping adventures
Madeline Miller reworks Greek myth from the inside in The Song of Achilles, trusting old legend to hold real feeling. These adventures pull from the same well of gods, heroes, and fated warriors, from the Athena-sworn knights of Saint Seiya to Creation of the Gods II, Sinbad the Sailor, and the fairy-tale quest of Princess Arete.