Ransom

What happens when a young prince falls in battle and his body is spirited away to be desecrated and dishonoured? His death is the battle price of another young man's death, but what price dishonour and a father's grief? In this exquisite gem of a novel, David Malouf shines new light on Homer's "Iliad", adding twists and reflections, as well as flashes of earthy humour, to surprise and enchant. His version opens with Achilles, maddened by grief at the death of his friend Patroclus. From the walls of Troy, King Priam watches the body of his son Hector being dragged behind Achilles' chariot. There must be a way, he thinks, of reclaiming the body - of pitting compromise against heroics, new ways against the old, and of forcing the hand of fate. Dressed simply and in a cart pulled by a mule, an old man sets off for the Greek camp...Lyrical, immediate and heartbreaking, Malouf's fable engraves the epic themes of the Trojan war onto a perfect miniature - themes of war and heroics, hubris and humanity, chance and fate, the bonds between soldiers, fathers and sons, all newly burnished and brilliantly recast for our times.

In austere, elegant prose that subverts Homer's Iliad in significant ways, David Malouf has created in Ransom an imaginative terrain that is both new and old. The Age These pages of Ransom are nothing short of magical. Malouf's prose is delicate, marvellously alert to the natural world and endowed with a quality that has one name only: wisdom. The Sydney Morning Herald Ransom, his first novel in 10 years...is (however abused the word) a masterpiece, exquisitely written, pithy and wise and overwhelmingly moving, constructed with invisible, successful craft that leaves the reader wondering how in the world it has been done ... Fiction, in Malouf's hands, becomes the art of rendering the world coherent. Australian Literary Review Ransom, his first novel in 10 years...is (however abused the word) a masterpiece, exquisitely written, pithy and wise and overwhelmingly moving... Fiction, in Malouf's hands, becomes the art of rendering the world coherent. The Australian Review

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