Son of Nobody by Yann Martel

#SonofNobody #NetGalley

Unlike many others, I have not (as yet) read The Life of Pi so that is not why I wanted to read this novel by Yann Martel. I was deeply interested in it because I had just read the Iliad in a class (and an excellent one at that!). I learned so much and felt much more than I had ever anticipated while reading that work. The time was right for Son of Nobody as the Iliad was fresh in my mind.

This book will, I think, have both its fans and detractors. It requires a bit on the reader’s part and is certainly not a page turner. However, I was fascinated by how the author had thought about the Iliad and written something that relied on that, while being original.

This is a story told in two narratives. One is about Psoas. He is a fictional every man who experienced the Trojan War. He did not come from an illustrious line and yet was thrust into this very long conflict.

The other story is about the scholar who explores Psoas’s story. His last name is Donne (for the poet?). He is on a quest and this has led him to be a less than perfect husband and father.

This is a work of literary fiction. It can be read by those who have no experience of the Iliad but will be enjoyed most by those who have a reference point. It this book appeals, I suggest reading a summary of the Iliad, if needed, first.

I am glad to have read this one. Many thanks to NetGalley and W.W. Norton & Company for this title. All thoughts are my own.

Pub date: 31 March 2026

Description:

From the publisher

From the author of the international bestseller Life of Pi, a brilliant retelling of the Trojan War from the perspective of two commoners: an ancient soldier and a modern scholar.

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were not the only ancient tales of the Trojan War. In Son of Nobody, Yann Martel composes a new legend: the Psoad, an epic in free verse that follows a goatherd’s son, Psoas of Midea, who leaves his wife and family to fight at Troy. Psoas meets his doom and the poem of his life is lost—until a Canadian academic studying at Oxford, Harlow Donne, discovers its relics thirty centuries later. As Harlow assembles and comments on the fragments in footnotes, he retrieves memories of his wife and daughter and grapples with questions of ambition, family, and responsibility in both the ancient and modern worlds. Son of Nobody upends the regal perspective of traditional epics and shows that “the past is never done with, that always there are parallels and returns and repetitions, always the song continues.” Readers of Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles and Emily Wilson’s The Iliad will revel in this breathtaking feat of the imagination.

About the Author: 

Yann Martel is the author of Life of Pi, the international bestseller that won the 2002 Booker Prize and was adapted to the screen in the Oscar–winning film by Ang Lee. He lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Praise for Son of Nobody: A Novel

A brilliant novel of ideas. . . . A powerful meditation on life, death, and the vanity of human wishes, all illustrated by a poem that would do Homer proud. A stunningly imagined revisitation of an ancient past.
— Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Original, thought-provoking, and utterly absorbing… [An] inventive novel about a classics scholar who makes a thrilling discovery.
— Kristine Huntley, Booklist, starred review

Inspired… An appealing labor of love.
— Publishers Weekly

From Publishers Weekly:

Yann Martel

Author

“I was inspired by Homer’s Iliad. The Trojan War still speaks to us today because it was a siege, and waiting, prolonged waiting, is very trying. Waiting is an incubator of wild ideas and unwarranted rage, hence the violence that can arise when it finally ends. Waiting fascinates the ancient and modern minds because to learn how to live is to learn how to wait, how to deal with the sand as it falls through the hourglass. We all live before the walls of Troy.”