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Son of Nobody

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Son of Nobody

By: Yann Martel
Narrated by: Robin Wilcock, Aaron Willis
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The past is never done with: always the song continues

Harlow Donne has devoted his life to the Classical world. When a chance comes up to study an obscure collection of papyrus fragments at Oxford University, he seizes it. Though it means leaving his daughter and fracturing marriage back home in Canada, this is the kind of career break he desperately needs.

In the depths of the Bodleian Library, Harlow discovers a lost account of the Trojan War, a glimpse into the founding of Western civilization itself. He names the epic poem The Psoad, after its protagonist, a Greek commoner identified as Psoas of Midea but known to all as ‘son of nobody’.

As sole translator and interpreter of the Psoad, Harlow dedicates the poem and its modern footnotes to his daughter, Helen. Under his gaze, the text unlocks echoes of Ancient Greece into the present day, and a personal message to his beloved child appears. Despite the three-thousand-year gap between the two, a thread hasn’t frayed: the universal song of homesickness and regret, of ambition and grief.

In this masterpiece of myth and history, Son of Nobody explores how stories become facts, the price we pay to share them and how we live – then, now and always. Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Ancient History Ancient Greece Greek Mythology Mythology
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Critic reviews

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Most relevant
Martell has a point that Jesus wouldn't have been recognised if it hadn't been for the Greeks but to work that out in defence of letting go of history in favour of personal narrative in this way is risky and cuts technical corners that leave both this fictitious Illiad rewrite and the significance of the Trojan war and the birth of Christianity a little undercooked while we have to read through a lot repeating text psychoanalysed in a fanciful way that also doesn't get to the spirit of myth. The meaning of storytelling is to get us through life when your own story stalls for a bit. But that is only a modern take: there is more to explore in an ancient text than history or psychology. So it's not exactly a spiritual approach to any of the subjects featured (many spiritual). But did he aim for that? Maybe it's just about finding what matters most to you in life and then regretting not knowing this before? But then I don't know why one would go to the Greeks to explore this theme, of all people.

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I think it helps if you know the classics and my knowledge is limited to fictional accounts. There is also a powerful and sad personal story.

Dramatic performances

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Story was unusual but didn’t really say anything. I didn’t like the main character. It was short but didn’t say much

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