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In his first novel in more than a decade, award-winning author David Malouf reimagines the pivotal narrative of Homer’s Iliad—one of the most famous passages in all of literature.
This is the story of the relationship between two grieving men at war: fierce Achilles, who has lost his beloved Patroclus in the siege of Troy; and woeful Priam, whose son Hector killed Patroclus and was in turn savaged by Achilles. A moving tale of suffering, sorrow, and redemption, Ransom is incandescent in its delicate and powerful lyricism and its unstated imperative that we imagine our lives in the glow of fellow feeling.
In popular culture, Achilles has fared pretty well. Though he came from an age crowded with demigods, he has outlasted his contemporaries to become uniquely prevalent in the modern imagination. Anybody who's been devoted to a sports team knows that a season can be lost to a torn Achilles tendon (so named because Achilles learned archery from a great tutor, and their bows were made from ankle sinew), and anyone who's ever uttered a cliché is familiar with an Achilles heel (derived from the post-Homeric legend that Achilles's mother gripped his foot when she dunked him in the River Styx, thereby leaving it untouched, and unprotected, by the death-defying waters). Today, moreover, if you've ever flourished an emoticon you'll affiliate the Greek warrior with Brad Pitt, all bronzed forearms and gorgeous pout.
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Jennifer Lowe
reviewed Ransom on January 15, 2015 Ransom
The ancient times… They still agitate us and we are ready to return to antiquity again and again.
In the ancient times, when gods were many, they were easy to reach - should one just doze off and some numinous being wouldn't take long to appear. It's a shame that in the modern times we can see nothing but dreams.
Often, in the lapse of light in the chamber where he sits nodding, or in a leisure hour beside the fishpond in his garden, one or other of the gods will materialise, jelly-like, out of the radiant vacancy. An old, dreamlike passivity in him that he no longer finds it necessary to resist will dissolve the boundary between what is solid and tangible in the world around him - mulberry leaves afloat on their shadows, the knobbly extrusions on the trunk of a pine - and the weightless medium in which his consciousness is adrift, where the gods, in their bodily presence, have the same consistency as his thoughts.
The King of Troy and a plebeian mule driver are carrying the treasure to Achilles in order to ransom the corpse of King's son Hector and it is a common carter who teaches King a lesson.
Mightn't the gods regret it too, and think they acted too hasty, and be sorry now to have seen all that strength go for nothing in the world? Ah, there's many things we don't know, sir. The worst happens, and there, it's done. The fleas go on biting. The sun comes up again.
And a life of a common man is as valuable as a life of king…
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