Promotional Information

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2019
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
THE NEW YORK TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER

From the Orange Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author of The Song of Achilles comes the powerful story of the mythological witch Circe, inspired by Homer’s Odyssey

About the Author

Madeline Miller is the author of The Song of Achilles, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction 2012, was shortlisted for the Stonewall Writer of the Year 2012, was an instant New York Times bestseller, and was translated into twenty-five languages. Madeline holds an MA in Classics from Brown University, and she taught Latin, Greek and Shakespeare to high school students for over a decade. She has also studied at the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, and at Yale School of Drama, where she focused on the adaptation of classical texts to modern forms. Her essays have appeared in publications including the Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Lapham’s Quarterly and NPR.org. She lives outside Philadelphia.

madelinemiller.com

Reviews

Circe gives us a feminist slant on the Odyssey … Miller makes these age-old texts thrum with contemporary relevance … An airy delight, a novel to be gobbled greedily in a single sitting
*Observer*

Enough magic, enchantment, voyages and wonders to satisfy the most jaded sword-and-sorcery palate. Miller approaches Odysseus’s story from Circe’s point of view, richly evoking her protagonist’s overlapping identities as goddess, witch, lover and mother
*Guardian, Books of the Year*

Circe back as superwoman … Homer’s witch get a kickass modern makeover… Miller’s Me Too-era, kickass portrait of a woman trying to defy the men and Fates arrayed against her is enchanting… Blisteringly modern
*The Times*

In a thrilling tour de force of imagination, Miller makes her otherworldly heroine a complex, sympathetic figure for whom we cheer throughout. Circe is a truly spellbinding novel, the mesmerising shimmer of ancient magic rising from it like a heat haze
*Mail on Sunday*

A brilliantly strange work of mythic science fiction, as effortlessly expressive within the palaces of gods as it is about the world below … Superb … This is both a fabulous novel and a fascinating retelling; the best compliment, perhaps, that any myth could hope for
*Daily Telegraph*

A triumph
*The Times, Books of the Year*

Circe is poised to become the literary sensation of the summer, as much for the quality of its writing as its timeliness
*Sunday Times Magazine*

This year’s novels were filled with the angry clamour of women’s voices: ignored, idealistic or excitingly ambivalent. Madeline Miller reflected the mood for feminist revisionism with her lissom follow-up Circe, which casts the witch goddess in the Odyssey not as a bit player in a man’s epic but as the star of her own show
*Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year*

It was a big year for creative retelling of myth and pre-modern literature; a favourite was Madeline Miller's Circe, a distinctive, lyrical novel about power, agency and reponsibility, from the point of view of this crafty, much-misunderstood goddess
*Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year*

The writing is lovely, the tone assured, and the touch just right
*Independent, Books of the Year*