The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
A reimagining of the relationship between Patroclus and Achilles over the course of the Iliad.
Circe by Madeline Miller
A retelling of the life of Circe, as she is banished to an island by Zeus and encounters many famous mythological figures.
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
A retelling of Sophocles’ Antigone set in London, focusing on two immigrant Pakistani families.
The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
A feminist reimagining of the story of Briseis, a Trojan woman captured and made the concubine of Achilles, who becomes the object of a power struggle between Achilles and Agamemnon.
Here, the World Entire by Anwen Hayward
A retelling of the myth of Medusa and Perseus, from Medusa’s point of view.
Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung by Nine Maclaughlin
Reclaiming the voices of raped and abused women in the Metamorphoses, through song, therapy sessions, whispers, and lyrics.
Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin
A retelling of the second half of the Aeneid from the point of view of Lavinia, the Latin princess who never speaks and only blushes in Vergil’s work.
Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
The story of Penelope from the Odyssey retold as an epic of her own. Also contemplates the fate of the other women in the Odyssey from a feminist point of view.
Ransom by David Malouf
A rumination on the grief that brings together Achilles and King Priam at the end of the Iliad.
The House of Names by Colm Tóibín
A humanized telling of the horrors of the House of Atreus with the gods removed to make humans fully accountable for their choices.
The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason
A reimagining of the Odyssey that incorporates fragments, other tales, lost threads, and reinvents the original with new tangents.
The War Nerd Iliad by John Dolan
A modern pseudo-translation of the Iliad, made accessible through 20th century prose and style.
Nightingale by Paisley Rekdal
Poems that rewrite and modernize Ovid’s Metamorphoses, where it is not the gods that dramatically change people, but human events. Ends with a series of poems contemplating the ongoing consequences of rape and assault on survivors.
The Tradition by Jericho Brown
Wherein the poet contemplates rape and myth, particularly with poem “Ganymede,” as well as the intersections of queerness and blackness.