Six notable novels set in the ancient world

Elodie Harper is a journalist and prize-winning short story writer. Her story 'Wild Swimming' won the 2016 Bazaar of Bad Dreams short story competition, which was judged by Stephen King.

She is currently a reporter at ITV News Anglia, and before that worked as a producer for Channel 4 News. Her job as a journalist has seen her join one of the most secretive wings of the Church of Scientology and cover the far right hip hop scene in Berlin, as well as crime reporting in Norfolk where her first two novels were set – The Binding Song and The Death Knock.

Harper studied Latin poetry both in the original and in translation as part of her English Literature degree at Oxford, instilling a lifelong interest in the ancient world. The Wolf Den is the first in a trilogy of novels about the lives of women in ancient Pompeii.

At the Waterstones blog Harper tagged six favorite novels set in the ancient world, including:

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

The Silence of the Girls is a visceral recreation of the Greek siege of Troy told from the perspective of the captured and prostituted women who were enslaved by the Greek heroes. The relationship between the central character Briseis and her legendary owner/lover Achilles is depicted with a total lack of sentimentality and Barker is unflinching in depicting the psychological and physical horrors the women would have faced, without being overly graphic. It is an approach that upends the myth’s sense of familiarity, forcing you to look at some of literature’s most famous characters with new eyes.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Silence of the Girls is among Abbie Greaves's ten top books about silence and Kris Waldherr's ten favorite books inspired by mythology.

--Marshal Zeringue