The Songs of the Kings: A Novel Read online

  Edward Tripp, Dictionary of Classical Mythology

  Racine, Iphigénie

  Euripides, Iphigeneia in Aulis

  Aeschylus, The Oresteia (translated, with an introductory essay, by Robert Fagles)

  Homer, The Iliad

  M. P. Nilsson, Minoan-Mycenaean Religion

  Walter Burkert, Greek Religion

  Hugh Lloyd-Jones, “Artemis and Iphigeneia” (Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1983)

  E. O. James, The Ancient Gods

  M. I. Finley, The World of Odysseus

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Barry Unsworth won the Booker Prize in 1992 for Sacred Hunger; his next novel, Morality Play, was a Booker nominee and a bestseller in both the United States and Great Britain. His other novels include After Hannibal, The Hide, and Pascali’s Island, which was also short-listed for the Booker Prize and was made into a feature film. He held the position of visiting fellow at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and lives in Umbria with his wife.

  ALSO BY BARRY UNSWORTH

  The Partnership

  The Greeks Have a Word for It

  The Hide

  Mooncranker’s Gift

  The Big Day

  Pascali’s Island

  (published in the United States

  under the title The Idol Hunter)

  The Rage of the Vulture

  Stone Virgin

  Sugar and Rum

  Sacred Hunger

  Morality Play

  After Hannibal

  Losing Nelson

  PUBLISHED BY NAN A. TALESE

  AN IMPRINT OF DOUBLEDAY

  a division of Random House, Inc.

  DOUBLEDAY is a registered trademark

  of Random House, Inc.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,

  businesses, organizations, places, events, and

  incidents either are the product of the author’s

  imagination or are used fictitiously. Any

  resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Unsworth, Barry, 1930– The songs of the kings: a novel / Barry Unsworth. —1st ed. in the United States of America p. cm. 1. Iphigenia (Greek mythology)—Fiction. 2. Agamemnon (Greek mythology)—Fiction. 3. Greece—History—To 146 B.C.—Fiction. 4. Trojan War—Fiction. I. Title. PR6071.N8 S’.914—dc21 2002066845

  Copyright © 2003 by Barry Unsworth

  All Rights Reserved.

  April 2003

  www.randomhouse.com

  eISBN: 978-0-307-42414-3

  v3.0r1

  ALSO BY

  BARRY UNSWORTH

  “Unsworth is one of the best historical novelists on either side of the Atlantic…his vast knowledge of 18th-century social and material conditions creates a rich and strange rendering of daily life that’s utterly persuasive.” —The New York Times Book Review

  “Told with bite and freshness…Unsworth gives his figures glittering definition, and then leaves them open and undefined.” —The Boston Globe

  “[Unsworth’s] sentences recall the sharp detail, moral sensitivity and ready wit of Charles Dickens. But his sense of the lumbering, uneven gait of social progress is more sophisticated, more tempered, one might say, by history.” —The Washington Post