The Song of Achilles ★★★★★

He has gone to the underworld, and I am here.

A wonderful book. Threads the needle of being both poetic and accessible, modern while not trying to modernise an ancient perspective. Patroclus, perhaps, as our window into the story, does have a more modern outlook on life and violence, but the characters generally understand themselves in a Homeric manner. They are concerned with glory and honour, war and heroics, without self-conscious reimagining in more cynical terms that many adaptations do. And it deftly weaves a story of queerness into this, with Patroclus’ and Achilles’ relationship furtive and endangered not because they are gay (this is ancient Greece) but because of status, because of prophecy, because in the eyes of Gods and kings that the relationship diminishes Achilles, leading to a brutal story of queer erasure, denying them each other even in death. I sobbed my way through the last few chapters.