'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 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 two-thousand-year gap between the two, a thread hasn't frayed: the universal song of homesickness and regret, of ambition, love and grief.
In this masterpiece of myth, history and domesticity, Son of Nobody explores how stories become facts, the price we pay to share them and how we live - then, now and always.
A classical scholar uncovers a lost account of the Trojan war. The translated poem unfolds at the top of the page, with heartfelt footnotes addressed to his young daughter below, in a meditation on mythmaking, homemaking and storytelling - BOOKS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2026, Guardian
The first novel in a decade from the author of Life of Pi. A fictional Homeric epic about an overlooked Trojan hero is interspersed with footnotes from failing academic Harlow Donne, who translates the poem for the daughter he has left behind - 2026 FICTION HIGHLIGHTS, Observer
The 2002 Man Booker Prize-winning author of Life of Pi retells the Trojan war by placing at its centre Psoas of Midea, a goatherd's son and subject of The Psoad, a 3,000-year-old epic that has been rediscovered by a Canadian academic - WHAT TO READ IN 2026, Financial Times
The much-loved author of 2001's Life of Pi is back with a new novel. Known for his ability to balance intricate narratives with epic stories philosophical questioning, Martel's Son of Nobody connects the lives of a foot soldier in the Trojan War with an academic who has abandoned his family life for his studies. A beautiful story about what we can learn from the past when it comes to homesickness, grief, love and ambition - THE MOST HYPED BOOKS WE CAN'T WAIT TO READ IN 2026, Elle Magazine
Yann Martel's much-loved, Booker-winning Life of Pi will be hard to match but we're intrigued by this new tale about an academic who discovers a lost account of the Trojan War with bizarre connections to his own life - THE READS TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN 2026, Times
Martel is an original, strange and subtle thinker - URSULA K. LE GUIN
Praise for LIFE OF PI: 'A terrific book . . . Fresh, original, smart, devious, and crammed with absorbing lore' - MARGARET ATWOOD
A unique and original story, brilliantly told - Guardian
Pi is bewitching, the tale both nihilistic and naïve, philosophical and playful, deeply moving while always treading the line clear of schmalz - Independent
