Product Description

Alessandro Baricco re-creates the siege of Troy through the voices of 21 Homeric characters. Sacrificing none of Homer's panoramic scope, Baricco forgoes Homer's detachment and admits us to realms of subjective experience his predecessor never explored. From the return of Chryseis to the burial of Hector, we see through human eyes and feel with human hearts the unforgettable events first recounted more than 3,000 years ago events arranged not by the whims of the gods in this instance but by the dictates of human nature.With Andromache, Patroclus, Priam, and the rest, we are privy to the ghastly confusion of battle, the clamour of the princely councils, the intimacies of the bedchamber until finally only a blind poet is left to recount secondhand the awful fall of Ilium.Imbuing the stuff of legend with a startlingly new relevancy and humanity, Baricco gives us "The Iliad" as we have never known it. His transformative achievement is certain to delight and fascinate all the readers of Homer's indispensable classic.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #87915 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Review
"* 'Baricco has written an Iliad for his time, a wonderful, gripping take on a story that has haunted our culture since it was first told.' - The Times * 'You won't, and can't put it down' - Observer * "A swift, stylish, summer-reading version of the great epic." - San Francisco Chronicle * "A taut and mesmerizing tale." - Seattle Times"

The Times
... a wonderful, gripping take on a story that has haunted our culture since it was first told.

About the Author
Alessandro Baricco was born in Turin in 1958. He is the author of six novels, including Silk and Without Blood, four of which have been translated into English. Ann Goldstein has translated works by, among others, authors Roberto Calasso, Alessandro Baricco, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Aldo Buzzi. She has been the recipient of the PEN Renato Poggioli Translation Award.

Customer Reviews

Baricco's monument to war
I came to AN ILIAD having read SILK, a slim novella by Baricco. SILK was beautiful - full of sensuality and the prose read more like poetry, it was so packed with emotion. So, I hoped that Baricco's magic would rub off onto this telling of The Iliad.
I confess, I have never read the original, although its story is one of the most famous from the literary world. Baricco has stated in his note on war that The Iliad is a monument to war. That it was meant to "sing of mankind at war, [. . .] to sing of the solemn beauty, and the immutable emotion, that war once was and always will be". Having not read the original, I cannot comment upon whether this goal was achieved. Having now come away from AN ILIAD by Baricco, I believe that he, at least, has achieved this. Why, therefore, the mediocre rating from myself?
This comes down to my own personal preferences - perhaps the reason I have never opened the original is because I have known that I would not find the kind of beauty that I hold dear. With Baricco's offering, although I am able to recognise his talent for writing beautiful prose, the essence of the story was not what I needed at the time. To read page after page about war can be draining, no matter how talented the writer may be.
While I still regard Baricco as a superb writer, and I see that many will find AN ILIAD to be an inspired piece of work which provides characters from myth a voice about one of the most famous battles, I just have to concede that it is not my cup of tea. I am more of a silk girl. . .

An accessible Introduction to the Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem, supposedly written by Homer, but most people think it has several authors. It tells the tale of a few months during the siege of Troy, by the Greeks.

It starts with Agamemnon, the Greek's 'king of kings', being forced to give up Chryseis, one of his spoils of war. In compensation he seizes Briseis from Achilles. This causes Achilles to withdraw from the war. The Iliad chronicles the various bloody battles and strategic withdrawals that ensue, and it ends pretty much at stale-mate.

That, at least, is the original version. Baricco adds a final chapter set years later which tells how the famous wooden horse allows a small contingent of men into Troy, and the city is eventually sacked.

In the very interesting preface Baricco explains exactly what he has done. He has taken a prose version of the Iliad written by Maria Grazia Ciani, and condensed it to a much shorter piece. He made some cuts, looked for rhythm, 'made the narrative subjective' ie told the many different voices in the first person supplanting the original Homeric narrator, and added a little to the text - these are italicised. These italicised passages were my favourite parts. The writing was quite beautiful and it made me want to read more of Baricco's work.

This version was performed twice each performance lasting two nights with a cast of eight taking different voices.

As Baricco points out this is a Greek text translated into an Italian text, adapted into another Italian text and then translated into English. So, it is somewhat derivative.

I found reading it very interesting, and having never read the Iliad before think I have learnt a lot very quickly. The number of different characters meant that it was sometimes difficult to follow but this is inevitable given the source. I think, as an exercise, it has worked well.

Reading the text reminded me of Jane Smiley's THE GREENLANDERS and also, to some extent, THE BIBLE. The prose tends towards a list and there is never a sense of involvement with the characters - reflection of the era in which it was originally written. Although Baricco says he has made it more subjective by attributing parts of the text to certain people, I am not sure that he has added anything to the text by doing this. The characters often describe scenes they couldn't have known, and in one chapter (Priam's) the first person becomes confused with the third. The chapter starts with Priam in the third person then suddenly changes to first person.

However I am glad I read this book, and recommend it - not particularly as a riveting read, but as an interesting way of absorbing a piece of essential western European culture.