Nobody

 Son of Nobody: A Novel by Yann Martel

“In The Iliad, not a single commoner speaks (with one notable exception). Homer’s omniscient perspective closely aligns with the point of view of the Greek ruling class. It is an aristocratic perspective. Whereas here [in the fictitious epic the Psoad], a commoner speaks so much he practically filibusters.” (p. 62)

Son of Nobody alternates between two stories, one modern in the US and England, and one in the ancient world of the Trojan War. The link between the stories is a classical scholar who has discovered a new epic about the Greeks at Troy, the Psoad, the history of a common soldier named Psoas. This scholar works at a library in Oxford, while his wife and child have remained in America. At the beginning of each chapter of Martell’s novel, we read an excerpt from the newly discovered epic (which of course exists only in the novel). Following each excerpt, we read the story of the scholar as he hears from his wife, who resents his absence from their home while he’s in Oxford.

Tragedy strikes: their child dies of a sudden infection. Martell suggests connections and similarities between the modern and ancient stories. I find the situation of a very sick child and remote father to be poignant, though contrived. Throughout there are vivid and significant details — such as the appearance of the pottery fragment where the previously unknown epic was recorded. Emotions like the suffering of the family, the grief of a bereaved father, and the fear of the mother all are vivid. But collectively, the descriptive passages somehow did not come together for me: I don’t think the book succeeds.

As far as I can discover, the character Psoas along with his name and the epic about him are the creation of Martel, not taken from ancient myth or history. There is an English word psoas, which refers to “a long, ribbon-shaped muscle in your back. It starts at your lower back and runs through your pelvis to the top of your femur.” (source) I see no connection between the word’s meaning and the character in the novel.

In short, I find the novel a bit puzzling and not entirely satisfying.

Artifacts from Homer’s Era

From our trip in 2025

As I read, I was thinking about the objects we saw last summer when visiting the Greek islands.

A pottery fragment from the time of the Homeric epic.

“The temptation is to see truth in the rational and mere embellishment in the myth.” (p.229)

Blog post © 2026, photos © 2025 mae sander