The Mighty Dead

Longlisted for the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. Where does Homer come from? And why does he matter? His epic poems of war and suffering can still speak to us of the role of destiny in life, of cruelty, of humanity and its frailty, but why they do is a mystery. How can we be so intimate with something so distant? This is a genre-defying book of vast ambition which takes the reader on a deeply profound, tender journey through Adam Nicolson’s love of Homer and why he believes this great ancient poet still matters to us all in our search to understand what it is to be human, to love, to lose, to grow old and to die.