In this insightful account of The Iliad, a young Greek teacher draws on the enduring power of myth to help her students cope with the terrors of the Nazi occupation. Bombs fall on a Greek village during World War II, and a teacher takes her students to a cave for shelter. There he tells them about another war, when the Greeks besieged Troy. Day after day, he tells how Greeks suffer from thirst, heat and nostalgia, and how opponents face each other: army against army, man against man. Hooves are cut off, heads fly, blood flows. Now it is others who invade Greece, the army of Nazi Germany. But the horrors are the same thousands of years later. Theodor Kallifatides provides remarkable psychological insight into his modern version of The Iliad, minimizing the role of the gods and delving into the mindset of their mortal heroes. Homer's epic comes alive with renewed urgency that allows us to experience events as if they were firsthand, and reveals eternal truths about the folly of war and what it means to be human.