Son of Nobody

The new epic from from the Booker Prize winning author of Life of Pi

Yann Martel

• Publisher: Canongate Books
• Year: 2026
• eBook ISBN:
  9781838859091
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Literatur Allgemein

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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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Author’s Note
• Prologue
• The Layout of the Ships
• The Arrival: The Porcupine’s Back
• The Arrival: The Good Country, the Walls of Troy
• The Layout of the Ships (bis)
• How Men Fought: The Hero and the Ordinary Man
• Prince Mestor and the Son of Nobody Meet for the First Time
• The Death of Elanthius
• The Destruction of the Hinterland
• Lice, Fleas, and the Heart
• Prince Mestor and the Son of Nobody Meet for the Second Time
• The Role of Horses
• The Wealth of Troy
• Achilles Kills Three Men
• The Death of Nastes
• How Men Die
• The Trojans Bring in Entertainment
• The Complaint of Thersites
• “Well, there he is.”
• The Catalogue of Sons
• Psoas Threatens Prince Mestor
• Prince Mestor Tells Psoas How Helen Came to Troy
• Thersites Speaks to Psoas
• Achilles Speaks to Psoas
• The Funeral Pyre of Achilles
• Prince Mestor and the Son of Nobody Fight
• Hades Speaks to Psoas
• The Trojan Goat
• The Sacking of Troy
• Psoas Finds Prince Mestor’s Residence
• Psoas Brings Hades the Flesh of Death