A decade since his last novel, The High Mountains Of Portugal, Yann Martel returns to action with the highly-anticipated Son Of Nobody. Harlow Donne, a Canadian classical academic, relocates to Oxford, leaving his wife and daughter. He’s there to study ancient, previously unseen texts which set out the tale of a common Greek soldier, Psoas – the son of nobody – whose perspective on the Trojan War is presented by Donne as The Psoad, an imagined accompaniment to The Iliad.
It’s a fascinating approach, viewing a version of history through the lens of one of its usually bypassed actors in a manner reminiscent of Madeline Miller’s The Song Of Achilles. And Martel’s ambitious approach to the novel’s structure elevates what could have been a derivative – if well-executed – work.
Donne is tormented by the distance between his new life and his daughter, Helen: “I failed you as a father, Helen, and I failed your mother as a husband.” Writing in the footnotes of his emergent epic, he begins a letter to her, which takes flight throughout Son Of Nobody. His words to Helen are interwoven with Psoas’ tale, presented in flowing, scholarly language; the two men’s perspectives converge to demonstrate a shared humanity, despite millennia of separation.
