Galatea

Madeline Miller was born in Boston in 1978 and grew up in New York City and Philadelphia. She attended Brown University, receiving both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in classics, in 2000 and 2001, respectively. She went on to teach Greek, Latin, and Shakespearean literature at the high school level. While still working as a teacher, she began her first novel, The Song of Achilles (2011), which took her 10 years to complete. Upon its publication, The Song of Achilles received widespread acclaim and the UK’s prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction. Miller’s next novel, Circe (2018), was also published to great acclaim. As of 2021, Miller is working on a novel about the goddess Persephone.

Miller’s novels and short stories frequently reconceive well-known classical myths from the perspective of a minor character or a character who does not speak in the original story. The Song of Achilles, for example, reimagines the relationship between legendary warrior Achilles and his best friend and lover, Patroclus, from Patroclus’s point of view. Similarly, Circe takes as its starting point the relationship of Circe and Odysseus as depicted in The Odyssey. The novel explores Circe’s origin story and expands upon her wishes and desires, decentering Odysseus from the