Madeline Miller

Madeline Miller is an American novelist and classicist whose fiction reimagines figures from ancient Greek literature. She earned degrees in Latin and Ancient Greek from Brown University, studied the adaptation of classical works at Yale School of Drama, and taught Latin, Greek and Shakespeare for more than a decade.

Her novels place familiar myths in the voices of characters whose inner lives receive less space in the surviving epics. The Song of Achilles follows the Trojan War through Patroclus, making his bond with Achilles the story’s emotional center. Circe turns to the witch of the Odyssey, tracing her exile, power and encounters with gods and mortals. In both books, divine violence and heroic fame are set against loneliness, love and the costs borne by less powerful people.

The Song of Achilles, Miller’s debut, won the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction and was named a 2013 Stonewall Honor Book by the American Library Association. Circe was shortlisted for the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Miller has also published Galatea, a short reworking of the Pygmalion myth.

Begin with The Song of Achilles. It is the clearest introduction to Miller’s method: she keeps the broad course of Homer’s war story while asking what kind of relationship could explain Achilles’ overwhelming grief for Patroclus. Readers drawn to its mortal viewpoint and mythic setting can continue with Circe.