The Songs of the Kings

A brilliant retelling of an ancient myth, The Songs of the Kings offers up a different narrative of the Trojan War, one devoid of honor, wherein the mission to rescue Helen is a pretext for plundering Troy of its treasures. As the ships of the Greek fleet find themselves stalled in the straits at Aulis, waiting vainly for the gods to deliver more favorable winds, Odysseus cynically advances a call for the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter, Calchas the diviner interprets events for the reader, and a Homer-like figure called the Singer is persuaded to proclaim a tale of a just war to hide the corrupt motivations of those in power. But couched within the Singer’s spin is a message at once timely and timeless: “There is always another story. But it is the stories told by the strong, the songs of kings, that are believed in the end.”

Barry Unsworth was born in 1930 and grew up in a mining town in northeast England. Descended from a long line of coal miners, he was the first Unsworth to escape the mines. He attended Manchester University and published his first novel, The Partnership, in 1966. He is the author of seventeen books, including The Ruby in Her Navel, longlisted for the Booker Prize; Pascali’s Island and Morality Play, both shortlisted for the Booker; and Sacred Hunger, co-winner of the Booker Prize. He died in 2012 at the age of eighty-one.