Book Recommendations
If you'd like to read your way to Crete, here's where we'd start.
Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold
A modern collection of Greek myths. Fry transforms the adventures of Zeus and the Olympians into emotionally resonant and deeply funny stories, without losing any of their original wonder, infused throughout with his distinctive wit and voice.
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Heroes: Mortals and Monsters, Quests and Adventures
Join Jason aboard the Argo as he quests for the Golden Fleece. See Atalanta outrun any man before being tricked with golden apples, and discover how Bellerophon captures the winged horse Pegasus to help him slay the monster Chimera.
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Troy
The kidnapping of Helen sees the Greeks launch a thousand ships against the city of Troy, laying siege for ten years. Heroism and hatred, love and loss, revenge and regret: the human passions written into the sand still speak to us today.
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The Iliad
Wilson's revelatory translation of Homer's great epic roars with the clamour of arms and the anguished cries of dying men, in crisp but resonant language that reveals palpably real, even "complicated," characters, both human and divine.
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The Odyssey
A poem about violence and the aftermath of war, about marriage and identity, and about travellers and the changing meaning of home. This vivid translation, the first by a woman, matches the pace and pathos of the Greek original.
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Ariadne
Ariadne, Princess of Crete, grows up listening to her nursemaid's stories of gods and heroes, beneath her golden palace, the hoofbeats of her brother, the Minotaur. When Theseus arrives, Ariadne risks everything for love. But will her decision ensure her happy ending?
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Hera
Traditionally portrayed as a jealous wife and wicked stepmother, Hera is ripe for a retelling that shows her as a powerful queen: ruthless when she needs to be, but also compassionate, strategic, and ambitious.
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Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths
Modern tellers of Greek myth have usually shown little interest in telling women's stories. Haynes redresses the balance, putting Hera, Aphrodite, Athene, and Circe on equal footing with their menfolk.
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Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth
From Natalie Haynes, a witty and razor-sharp tour of the goddesses of Olympus (Athene, Aphrodite, Hera, Artemis, Demeter and more), restoring the female divine to the centre of stories that have too often sidelined them.
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Horses of Fire
"I know the stories they will tell. I've heard the echoes of their songs, but this song is not theirs. It is mine." Behind the timeless tale of Troy you know is the one you never heard: the women who lived it.
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The Silence of the Girls
The Trojan War, retold from the women's camp. Briseis, once a queen, is now a captive prize passed between Achilles and Agamemnon: a ferocious counter-history to Homer, told by the women history usually leaves silent.
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How to Fit all of Ancient Greece in an Elevator
An exciting journey through space and time, from earliest prehistory to the end of classical antiquity, sparked by two strangers trapped in an elevator, and one simple question: "What do you do?"
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