Atlantis Rises asked Madeline Miller:

I haven't gotten to Circe yet but WOW did I love Song of Achilles. I especially love the way you took the Homeric epic with its lack of character internality and made it such an intimate, personal novel. Did you deliberate a lot on POV and/or narrator, or did you go into it knowing that it has to be through Patrocles' eyes?

Madeline Miller Thank you! And it was always going to be Patroclus. He was the one who fascinated me--the most beloved companion of Achilles, the so-called minor character whose actions are the turning point of the entire Iliad. He is called "gentle" in Homer, and "kind to everyone," which makes him an outlier among the other Greek soldiers. And of course, he is the only thing that matters more to Achilles than his reputation. I wanted to understand him, and why he meant so much to Achilles. And I'm very grateful: he was a wonderful person to spend ten plus years living with. The only time I considered switching narrators was towards the end, after the---spoiler, but it is in the Iliad---fateful encounter with Hector. I briefly considered moving to Briseis, or Achilles as a narrator. But that was only for a moment. The Song of Achilles is Patroclus' book, and his voice is its heart, and he deserved to tell his story to the end.

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