Madeline Miller · 2011 · exile

Madeline Miller's 2011 first novel, ten years in the writing, telling the Iliad from Patroclus's side. An exiled boy of no consequence is fostered at the court where Achilles is growing up, and the two of them go from a centaur's cave on Mount Pelion to a beach below Troy - where one of them dies in the other's armour.

1. 1
   Opous

   Patroclus is the disappointing son of a Locrian king - shy, small, no good at anything his father values - and at ten he pushes a boy who is bullying him, and the boy dies, and he is exiled for it.

2. 2
   Phthia

   Sent to be fostered at Peleus's court in Thessaly among a private army of boys, where he is nobody - and Achilles, the golden son of a sea goddess, picks him out of the crowd for no reason either of them can explain.

3. 3
   Mount Pelion

   Chiron's cave on the mountain, and the happiest section of the book: two boys taught medicine, music and war by a centaur, with the sea below and nothing yet decided about either of them.

4. 4
   Phthia

   Recalled when Helen is taken and the kings of Greece start counting ships - and Thetis, who knows the prophecy, takes Achilles away in the night rather than let him go to a war that will kill him.

5. 5
   Scyros

   Hidden among King Lycomedes's daughters in a dress, married off to Deidameia and made a father - and found by Odysseus, who lays out weapons among the trinkets and watches which of the girls reaches for a spear.

6. 6
   Aulis

   The fleet becalmed and a thousand ships waiting, and Agamemnon sends for his daughter on the pretext of marrying her to Achilles - and cuts her throat on the altar in front of him, which is where the book turns cold.

7. 7
   Troy

   Ten years on a beach below the walls: the quarrel over Briseis, Achilles refusing to fight, and Patroclus putting on his armour to save the ships - and Hector kills him, which is the only thing that ever moved Achilles at all.