Doesn’t everybody obsessively dive into a reading program before travel to a new location? Here’s my running list of titles to explore.

The Classics

  • Homer, The Iliad / The Odyssey (recommended translation: Emily Wilson)
  • Virgil, The Aeneid
  • Herodotus, The Histories

The Plays

  • Aeschylus, Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, Eumenides
    Seven Against Thebes, Prometheus Bound, Suppliants, Persians
  • Aristophanes, The Frogs, Lysistrata, The Birds
  • Euripides, Medea, The Trojan Women, Bacchae
  • Sophocles, The Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus
    Ajax, Philoctetes, Electra

Discussion / Retellings

  • Simon Critchley, Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us
  • Robert Graves, The Greek Myths
  • Stephen Fry, Greek Mythology: Mythos, Heroes, Troy, Odyssey
  • Natalie Haynes, Pandora’s Jar
  • Thomas Cahill, Sailing the Wine Dark Sea
  • John Ruskin, The Queen of the Air

Fictional & Feminist Takes

  • Claire Andrews, Daughter of Sparta: Daughter of Sparta, Blood of Troy, Storm of Olympus
  • Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad
  • Pat Barker, Women of Troy: The Silence of the Girls, The Women of Troy, The Voyage Home
  • Constance Casati, Clytemnestra
  • Maya Deane,Wrath Goddess Sing
  • Esther Friesner, Nobody’s Princess,Nobody’s Prize
  • Margaret George, Helen of Troy
  • Kerry Greenwood, Delphic Women: Medea, Cassandra, Electra
  • Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships, Stone Blind
  • Claire Heywood, Daughters of Sparta, The Shadow of Perseus
  • Alice Hoffman, The Foretelling
  • Ursula K. Le Guin, Lavinia
  • Hannah Lynn, A Spartan’s Sorrow
  • Kyle McCauley, We Can Be Heroes
  • Madeline Miller, Song of Achilles, Circe, Galatea
  • Claire North, The Songs of Penelope: Ithaca, House of Odysseus
  • Mary Renault
    Theseus: The King Must Die, The Bull from the Sea 
    Alexander the Great: Fire from Heaven, The Persian Boy, Funeral Games
  • Emily Robertson, Lifestyles of Gods and Monsters
  • Jennifer Saint, Atalanta, Ariadne, Elektra
  • Selby Wynn Schwartz, After Sappho
  • Laura Shepperson, Phaedra
  • Annie Sullivan, A Touch of Gold
  • Rosemary Sutcliff, Black Ships before Troy: The Story of the Iliad (YA novel)
  • Sarah Underwood, Lies We Sing to the Sea

Fictional Resettings

  • Kathryn Gossow, Cassandra (Australia modern day)
  • Liliam Rivera, Never Look Back
  • Veronica Roth, Arch-Conspirator (sf)
  • Susan Stokes-Chapman, Pandora (Georgian London)

Modern Fiction

  • Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
  • John Fowles, The Magus
  • Nicholas Gage, Eleni
  • Victoria Hislop, The Island
  • Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek, The Last Temptation of Christ

Non-fiction: HIstory / Travel / Memoirs

  • Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals
  • Lawrence Durrell, The Greek Islands 
  • Anthony Everitt, Alexander the Great
  • Mark Mazower, The Greek Revolution: 1821 and the Making of Modern Europe
  • Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi
  • Mary Norris, Greek to Me