This book is a game-changer – looking at medieval history (so often told as the narrative of kings and knights and clerics) as a story of women. It is not only a vital act of history: it represents a new way of looking at the past that has inspired my own book, MYTHICA (coming out in 2025), that looks at the real women behind the 'male tales' of Greek myth. This book has to be on my list of top reads, not just of 2024, but of all time.
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER LONGLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE
'Revelatory' GUARDIAN
'A firecracker somehow captured between two covers' LUCY WORSLEY
An instant bestseller and one of the most celebrated history books of the year, Femina reveals the power and influence of medieval women who have been written out of our history. From royalty and religion to fame and fury, see the medieval world - and the women erased from it - with fresh eyes.
'Absolutely brilliant and highly recommended' CAITLIN MORAN
'Femina is a ground-breaking history of the Middle Ages' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE
To read Hera is to read Jennifer Saint at her best: it was such a joy to enter the world of Olympus with her, and to see Hera reclaimed from her usual role of nagging wife and overbearing queen with a fierceness and a complexity that stayed with me long after I closed the book. The scope and ambition of the novel is breathtaking. Read it!
The enthralling tale of a powerful Greek goddess maligned in both myth and ancient history, as told by Sunday Times bestselling author Jennifer Saint.
'An exceptional achievement' ELODIE HARPER 'A very special novel' COSTANZA CASATI 'The essential mythological book of the decade' NIKITA GILL
When Hera, immortal goddess and daughter of the ancient Titan Cronus, helps her brother Zeus to overthrow their tyrannical father, she dreams of ruling at his side.
As they establish their reign on Mount Olympus, Hera suspects that Zeus might be just as ruthless and cruel as the father they betrayed.
Katherine Rundell's writing has always been stunning – pointed, graceful, full of wit and wonder. Here she is at her best. As a writer, it's a privilege to read a master of the craft at work; as a reader, it's a sheer act of joy.
'There was Tolkien, there is Pullman and now there is Katherine Rundell. Wondrous invention, marvellous writing.' - Michael Morpurgo
'Rundell's first foray into fantasy is both a deft, rich homage to the greats of children's literature and an absorbing, profoundly poignant quest story for those aged 9+ - quite possibly her best yet' - The Guardian
'A book stuffed full of fantastical, magical delight, and a world of richly imagined wonder' - Cressida Cowell
THE TIMES CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE WEEK * THE INDEPENDENT CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE WEEK * THE DAILY TELEGRAPH CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE WEEK * SUNDAY…
Did you love Madeline Miller’s Circe? Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls? Jennifer Saint's Elektra? Natalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships?
But did you ever wonder who the real women behind the myths of the Trojan War were?
Now award-winning classicist and historian Emily Hauser takes readers on an epic journey to uncover the astonishing true story of the real women behind ancient Greece’s greatest legends – and the real heroes of those ancient epics, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
Because, contrary to perceptions built up over three millennia, ancient history is not all about men – and it's not only men's stories that deserve to be told . . .
In Mythica Emily Hauser tells, for the first time, the extraordinary stories of the real women behind some of the western world’s greatest legends. Following in their footsteps, digging into the history behind Homer’s epic poems, piecing together evidence from the original texts, recent astonishing archaeological finds and the latest DNA studies, she reveals who these women – queens, mothers, warriors, slaves – were, how they lived, and how history has (or has not – until now) remembered them.
A riveting new history of the Bronze Age Aegean and a journey through Homer’s epics charted entirely by women – from Helen of Troy, Briseis, Cassandra and Aphrodite to Circe, Athena, Hera, Calypso and Penelope – Mythica is a ground-breaking reassessment of the reality behind the often-mythologized women of Greece’s greatest epics, and of the ancient world itself as we learn ever more about it.
"Stirring, enlightening, fascinating" — JENNIFER SAINT, bestselling author of Ariadne and Hera
"A masterpiece. Emily Hauser awakens in us a sense of wonder and shows us Homer in a new light: in a world inhabited by women uneclipsed by men" — GREGORY NAGY, Professor of Classics at Harvard University
"Offers a brilliant riposte to a millennia-old dilemma . . . Fascinating, enthralling and insightful – and helps to recolour the world of epic for us for good!" — MICHAEL SCOTT, Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Warwick University and author of X Marks the Spot
