Son of Nobody

Name: Son of Nobody
Price: 34.99 AUD
Availability: InStock
ISBN: 9781923058811

Yann Martel

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$34.99

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English

Text Publishing Company
31 March 2026

Fiction & Literature; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); Historical fiction

From the Man Booker Prize-winning author of Life of Pi comes a modern and imaginative retelling of the epic Trojan War.

'Stunningly imagined' Kirkus Reviews

'The past is never done with- always the song continues.'

Harlow Donne has sacrificed his life to the study of the Classical world. So when he is invited to Oxford University to work on an obscure collection of papyrus fragments it is an academic's dream come true. He must leave behind his daughter and wife in Canada, but offers like this don't come twice and he badly needs a change of fortune. Then, while studying in the Bodleian Library, he unearths a completely undiscovered account of the Trojan War, a glimpse into the founding of Western civilisation itself. He names the poem The Psoad, after its protagonist, a commoner identified only as Psoas, the son of nobody.

As sole translator and author of The Psoad, Harlow dedicates the poem and its footnotes to his daughter Helen, allowing the text to unlock the echoes of the ancient Greeks into the present day, and to share a personal message with his beloved child. Despite the two-thousand-year gap between the two, a thread hasn't frayed- the universal song of homesickness and regret, of ambition, love and grief.

In this masterpiece of myth, history and domesticity, Son of Nobody explores how stories become facts, the price we pay to share them and how we live-then, now and always.

Praise:

'Perfect for readers who love history, myth, and philosophical storytelling.' ArtPlus

'Ingenious... Martel brings a witty freshness to standard elements of Homeric narrative.' New York Times

'The writing is-so often-brilliant...electrically charged.' Observer

'Takes an iconic story - The Illiad - and finds a way to retell it as gripping as it is original.' QANTAS Magazine

'Original, thought-provoking, and utterly absorbing' Booklist, starred review

By: Yann Martel
Imprint: Text Publishing Company
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 233mm, Width: 154mm, Spine: 33mm
Weight: 408g
ISBN: 9781923058811
ISBN 10: 1923058819
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 31 March 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Yann Martel is the author of a short story collection, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, and of four novels, Life of Pi (for which he was awarded the 2002 Man Booker Prize), Self, Beatrice & Virgil, and The High Mountains of Portugal. Life of Pi was adapted for the silver screen by Ang Lee, garnering four Oscars. Martel also ran a guerilla book club with Stephen Harper, sending the former prime minister of Canada a book every two weeks for four years. The letters that accompanied the books were published as 101 Letters to a Prime Minister. Martel lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, with the writer Alice Kuipers and their four children.

Reviews for Son of Nobody

'An explosion of ideas that keep the pages turning... [A] wild, provocative novel.' * Independent on Sunday, on Beatrice and Virgil * 'A story to make you believe in the soul-sustaining power of fiction.' * Los Angeles Times Book Review, on Life of Pi * 'Replete with every bizarre and beautiful thing on earth... [F]ans will delight.' * The Times, on The High Mountains of Portugal *