Homer’s Daughter is Robert Graves’ novel of the girl, Nausicaa, a character in the Odyssey, who Graves believed was a its true author (not the blind and bearded Homer, whose Iliad was composed at least 150 years before…. ). That Homer did not write the Odyssey continues to be a bold historical and literary claim. Add to it Graves’s protofeminist heroine, and a radical modern classic is born.
In his Historical Note, Graves says the novel “re-creates, from internal and external evidence, the circumstances which induced Nausicaa to write the
Odyssey, and suggest how, as an honorary Daughter of Homer, she managed to get it included in the official canon.
“Here is the story of a high-spirited and religious-minded Sicilian girl who saves her father’s throne from usurpation, herself from a distasteful marriage, and her two younger brothers from butchery by boldly making things happen, instead of sitting still and hoping for the best.”
Seven Stories’ Robert Graves Project spans 14 titles, and includes fiction and nonfiction, adult, young adult and children’s books, in a striking new uniform design, with new introductions and afterwords. Homer’s Daughter joins our recent re-publication of
The Reader Over Your Shoulder and
Ann at Highwood Hall on our Triangle Square Books for Young Readers list. Among the works still to come are
Count Belisarius,
Hebrew Myths, and
Lawrence and the Arabs. The online partner for the Robert Graves Project is RosettaBooks
