Ithaca

In the tumultuous aftermath of the Trojan War, a young man battles to save his home and his inheritance. Setting out to find his father, he ends up discovering himself. 

Telemachus’s father, Odysseus, went off to war before he was born...and never came back. Aged sixteen, Telemachus finds himself abandoned, his father’s house overrun with men pursuing his beautiful mother, Penelope, and devouring the family’s wealth. He determines to leave Ithaca, his island home, and find the truth. What really happened to his father? Was Odysseus killed on his journey home from the war? Or might he, one day, return to take his revenge?

Telemachus's journey takes him across the landscape of bronze-age Greece in the aftermath of the great Trojan war. Veterans hide out in the hills. Chieftains, scarred by war, hoard their treasure in luxurious palaces. Ithaca re-tells Homer’s famous poem, The Odyssey, from the point of view of Odysseus’ resourceful and troubled son, describing Odysseus’s extraordinary voyage from Troy to the gates of hell, and Telemachus’s own journey from boyhood to the desperate struggle that wins back his home...and his father.

Patrick Dillon is a writer and award-winning architect. He is the author of 7 books, including Truth, Lies, Gin: The Much-Lamented Death of Madam Geneva, and The Last Revolution. Patrick Dillon has been fascinated by Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey since studying it at school, and has traveled extensively in Greece. He lives in London with his family, dividing his time between writing and architecture.