The Song of Achilles: A Novel

Mais Homère a encore un tableau à peindre : les adieux d’Hector à Andromaque. Le guerrier s’arrache aux bras de sa femme et entend la fameuse question antique : faut-il sacrifier le bonheur d’une vie mesurée sur l’autel de la gloire ?

It seemed in those few moments as if time had been suspended, that the wave curling over us might never break. Pure delusion, of course. The future was hurtling towards us, Achilles’s life measured now in days not weeks.

Isn’t that love’s highest aim? Not the interchange of two free minds, but a single, fused identity? I remembered seeing them on the beach the night I’d followed Patroclus down to the sea. This was what I’d glimpsed then.

‘Circe,’ he cried over the water between us. His voice rang the air like struck bronze. ‘My daughter came here.’