Evening&rsquo\;s Moderator: \;Nick Capodice\, co-host of NHPR&rsquo\;s Civics 101
\n\nIn \;Son of Nobody\, \;The Psoad \;is an Ancient Greek epic in free verse that follows a goatherd&rsquo\;s son\, Psoas of Midea\, who leaves his wife and family to fight with the Greeks at Troy. This commoner&rsquo\;s story was lost to time&mdash\;until Harlow Donne\, a Canadian academic who has left his own wife and daughter behind to study at Oxford\, discovers its relics nearly thirty centuries later.
\n\nAs sole translator and interpreter of \;The Psoad\, Harlow dedicates the poem and its footnotes to his daughter\, Helen. Under his gaze\, a personal message to his beloved child appears in the ancient text\, like a palimpsest. Despite the thousands of years and hundreds of miles that separate Psoas and Harlow\, a thread hasn&rsquo\;t frayed: the universal song of homesickness and regret\, of love\, ambition\, and grief.
\n\nSon of Nobody \;takes readers from the plains of Troy to the halls of Oxford\, from the classical to the contemporary\, from ancient verses to modern footnotes. It is a dazzling\, masterful feat of myth\, history\, and domesticity that explores how stories become facts\, the price we pay to share them\, and how we live&mdash\;then\, now\, always.
\n\nYann Martel \;is the author of \;Life of Pi\, the international bestseller that won the 2002 Booker Prize and was adapted to the screen in the Oscar-winning film by Ang Lee. He lives in Saskatoon\, Saskatchewan.
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