Son of Nobody

The past is never done with: always the song continues When Canadian classicist Harlow Donne is invited to Oxford University to work on a collection of papyrus fragments, it is a dream come true. He must leave behind his daughter and wife, but offers like this don't come twice. Then, while studying in the Bodleian Library, he unearths an undiscovered account of the Trojan War, a glimpse into the founding of Western civilisation itself. He names the poem The Psoad, after its protagonist, a commoner identified only as Psoas: the son of nobody. As sole translator of The Psoad, Harlow dedicates the poem to his daughter Helen, allowing the text to share a personal message and to unlock the echoes of the ancient Greeks into the present day. After two thousand years, a thread has not frayed: the universal song of homesickness and regret, of ambition, love and grief. A masterpiece of myth, history and domesticity, Son of Nobody explores how stories become facts, and how we live--then, now and always.