3000 Year Echo

Homer is alive and well in David Malouf's new novel Ransom. Told in dispassionate third person, the crux of the tale is the competing emotions of Achilles and Priam. Between them lays the body of dead Hector, killed when Achilles' rage boiled over, pushed to action after the death of his cousin Patroclus.
For his part, Priam is defeated at Troy, worried that his family will think ill of him, and aged in the face of conflict. Taking possession of his son's body drives the old King, hoping he can reclaim some small portion of what has been taken.
The two men come together in a choreography of grief that Malouf orchestrates with a deft touch, the language at once powerful and tender.
That Homer is alive some 3000 years after his death is a testament to the power of story. Any reader, or non reader, who cannot hear this echo, is likely deaf in other ways as well.