The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters by Adam Nicholson is an intense and enlightening read.
The book is also a deeply personal one as Nicholson grounds Homer’s story - which for him begins not in the eighth century B.C. when Homer is supposed to have lived, nor even in c.1250 when the events that inspired The Iliad are believed to have taken place, but centuries earlier - in the journey of his own life.
Thus, we find him ruminating on Homer while sailing in the Atlantic, and searching for the gates of Hades in southern Spain. This might have been just a nice literary conceit had Nicholson not included an account of how he was raped at Palmyra in Syria.
It is very brave of him to tell such a story and it elevates the personal aspect of this book from potentially being just a means to an end to being part of the end; Palmyra connects his life to that of the Trojans and Greeks whose story Homer told in a way that writing from a study or even boat never could.
Even at the best of times, The Mighty Dead is not an easy going read - there’s too much going on, both in the past and present - for that to be the case, but what it loses in casualness it makes up for in insight. I cannot stress that enough. Therefore, if you are interested in Homer or even just want to read a really well-written book, I recommend The Mighty Dead to you. I am sure you will not be disappointed.
9/10
Picture Credit
Front cover of The Mighty Dead: Waterstones
The Second Achilles 