Since Greek mythology was rediscovered during the Renaissance, it has been a major source of inspiration for artists. Judging from the number of classical reboots – books whose plot or characters are directly borrowed from Greek literature – that were published last year, fiction writers are no exception.  The lists of the most-awaited books of  2018 indicate that the trend is still going strong. Indeed, Circe, the new novel by Madeline Miller, author of the acclaimed The Song of Achilles (2013), is widely cited. Does it make sense to consider Greek myths as a new publishing niche or have they always been influential? What evolutions of our modern world could account for a renewed interest in Greek heroes, gods and tragedies?

According to British comedian and author Stephen Fry, whose book Mythos was published last November, the appeal of Greek mythology has been constant. If he endeavours to retell the Greek myths, it is because he considers them as the best stories ever conceived.Following Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales (1853), L. S. Hyde’s Favourite Greek Myths (1905) or Robert Graves’ The Greek Myths (1955), Fry devises his own prose version of Greek mythology for the benefit of the modern public. By refusing to engage in interpreting and explaining the myths, Fry focuses on the sheer pleasure of reciting old stories with a twist. In anticipation of the detractors who would reproach him for narrating with too much enthusiasm the “dreadful cycle of bloodlust, greed and killing” that is Greek mythology, he maintains the following: “In tinkering with the details I am doing what the people have always done with the myths. In that sense I feel that I am doing my bit to keep them alive”. The charm of Mythos derives mainly from the perpetual good humour of the author: “Kronos was moody. Had he the examples to go by, he would perhaps have identified with Konstantin from The Seagull with a suggestion of Morrissey.” It is also lodged in its sarcastic footnotes where the well-read Fry basks in his own recounting of anecdotes and etymological fun facts. However, Fry’s most innovative writing choice is to provide the reader with a “coherent narrative” that is meant to be read from beginning to end. As there is no index, the readers would be otherwise lost since most characters are presented long before their stories are developed. Providing the public with a unified account will suit some but disappoint the ones who favour a piecemeal approach to Greek mythology.

Another way of refreshing Greek myths is to narrate these well-known stories from a minor character’s perspective. The Song of Achilles aimed at elucidating a fundamental yet obscure part of the Iliad: the relationship between Achilles and his companion Patroclus. Miller wanted to give the latter a voice that did not exist in ancient sources. In the same respect, she has announced that her Circe will  be a “celebration of indomitable female strength in a man’s world.”

Her upcoming novel will therefore find its place in an ever-expanding corpus of “feminine” classical reboots. Since the publication of Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad (2005), in which Odysseus’ wife gives her own version of the Homeric tales, rewritings of Greek narratives from female perspectives have established themselves as a consistent subgenre of historical fiction. In 2017, Natalie Haynes’ The Children of Jocasta aimed at reassessing the standing of Oedipus’ mother and wife in her husband’s gest. Along the same lines, in the two first volumes of her ‘Gold Apple’ trilogy – For the Most Beautiful and For the Winner – Emily Hauser retold the Iliad through the eyes of the captive Briseis and Chryseis, instruments and witnesses to Achilles’ legendary wrath. It is no coincidence that Haynes and Hauser read Classics at university as their style  is quite academic. They begin  by tracking down the information available in ancient texts before filling the gaps. Despite the fascination it may hold, such a cautious approach might turn out to be frustrating. Even if the narrators are female, they can only tell what is in the sources: essentially male stories. In 2005, Atwood warned her reviewers against oversimplification: her Penelope was not and could not be a feminist in ancient times.

If Greek myths were more relevant than ever to writers in 2017, it is mostly because of the continuous rise of violence in international affairs. This summer, in her essay ‘Enraged: Why Violent Times Need Ancient Greek Myths’, Emily Katz Anhalt, a teacher in Greek and Latin at Sarah Lawrence College, suggested that rereading Greek classics might remind us to shift from anger to dialogue when confronted by ferocious politics and conflicts. Mary Beard, Britain’s most famous classicist, regretted in The New York Times that such an analysis did not leave room for just anger in the face of  of barbaric violence. Based on Greek tragedies rather than on epics, Colm Tóibín’s House of Names and Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire do not attempt to answer the tricky question of what political lessons can be drawn today from Greek myths. They do not try to prove that ancient mythology could be a soothing cure for our societies. They demonstrate that it is, if nothing else, a vehicle to aptly novelize the brutality of our world.

The two novels share several common features. Both stem from aborted attempts to have two seasoned novelists adapted Greek tragedies – Sophocles’ Antigone by Shamsie, the Oresteia by  Tóibín – for the contemporary stage. The two writers ultimately dropped the dramatic  form, though both novels are built upon the alternation of different characters’ voices, and precisely crafted dialogue. Above all, in both cases, the characters are shown to live in a disenchanted world, where the divine presence is at best flimsy.

In the very first pages of House of Names, Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife, states, after the sacrifice of her daughter Iphigenia: “I live alone in the shivering, solitary knowledge that the time of the gods has passed”. Her estranged daughter Electra similarly confesses to her brother Orestes that they are living in “a time when the gods are fading”. In Home Fire, though the story is set in a British-Pakistani Muslim family, faith is very seldom discussed. When Parvaiz leaves for Raqqa in Syria, it is mostly because he resents the way in which the father he never knew, a jihadi, was tortured by the Occidental forces. Even Isma (Ismen), his pious sister, proud of her religion, sometimes wonders: “What must it have felt like to inhabit a commonality of human experience – all eyes to the sky, watching for something mythic to land?”

In spite of these similarities, House of Names and Home Fire take different paths. Tóibín chooses to retain the ancient setting and mythological characters, even if he frees them from religious concerns and fatality. His interest in mythology lies in its mechanisms of vengeance and the endless violence it displays. In an interview in The Guardian, Tóibín confessed that, when writing, he was more preoccupied by the Troubles and ISIS exactions than driven by an antiquarian liking for myths. He quotes Dzhokhar Anzorovich Tsarnaev, the younger of the two brothers involved in the Boston Marathon bombing, as the main inspiration for his weak yet violent Orestes.

Home Fire resonates in the context of ISIS and jihad as Shamsie’s novel translates Antigone to  a contemporary setting. She often breaks away from Sophocles’ plot. It is now Ismen, not Aneeka (Antigone), who is the older and more pious sister. Aneeka, above all fierce and beautiful, has not two brothers but only a twin. The huge achievement of the novel is that, throughout the first 190 pages, the readers forget that they are reading a transposition of Sophocles’ play. Immersed in complex family and love stories, they feel for Isma, the elder who has left her sister and brother, “almost her children”, to study in Massachusetts. They feel for Aneeka who decides to seduce the Home Secretary’s son because she wants to help her twin to escape from Syria and return safely to Britain. They feel for Parvaiz, in spite of all his confusion, and hope he will survive. But Parvaiz is Aneeka’s brother. He is meant to die in order for us to begin identifying lines that could have been taken from Sophocles. “Accept the law, even if it’s unjust”, Isma tells the law student Aneeka, but not before page 196.

In the afterword, Shamsie apologizes for having turned a play into a novel. She need not. If she had stuck to tragic convention and had not changed genre, her last and explosive scene would not have been possible. Like Tóibín, it is when she emancipates herself from the burden of being faithful to ancient masterpieces that her novel becomes powerful enough to give us a sense of how intense the myths were for the Greeks.