Authors Like Madeline Miller

Ovid

Roman · Heroides (late 1st century BC), Metamorphoses (AD 8)

Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BC–c. AD 17) was the most fashionable poet of Augustus's Rome until the emperor banished him in AD 8 to Tomis, on the Black Sea, where he died. The Metamorphoses retells some 250 myths of transformation in fifteen books. The Heroides are verse letters from women of myth, among them Penelope, Ariadne and Medea, to the men who left them.

Mary Renault

British-South African · The King Must Die (1958), Fire from Heaven (1969), The Persian Boy (1972)

Renault (1905–1983) was born in London, trained as a nurse and moved to South Africa in 1948, where she wrote most of her novels of ancient Greece. The King Must Die tells the life of Theseus in his own voice; The Persian Boy tells Alexander the Great's story through Bagoas, the young Persian who loved him. Miller is quoted on the current Virago editions: “Mary Renault's portraits of the ancient world are fierce, complex and eloquent.”

Christa Wolf

German · Cassandra (1983; English 1984), Medea (1996; English 1998)

Wolf (1929–2011) was the best-known novelist of East Germany. Cassandra, written during the Cold War arms race, is the Trojan prophetess's account of a city talking itself into war, published with four essays on how she wrote it. In Medea she reworks the myth so that Medea is made the scapegoat for crimes she did not commit. In 1993 files emerged showing she had been a Stasi informant from 1959 to 1961; she had herself later been under Stasi surveillance for years.

Every book by Christa Wolf →

Margaret Atwood

Canadian · The Handmaid's Tale (1985), The Penelopiad (2005)

Atwood was born in Ottawa in 1939. The Penelopiad, written for Canongate's series of retold myths, is the Odyssey told by Penelope from the underworld, interrupted by a chorus of the twelve maids Odysseus had hanged. In 2016 she signed an open letter supporting due process for a novelist dismissed by the University of British Columbia, which drew sharp criticism from some feminists; she defended her position in a 2018 essay.

Every book by Margaret Atwood →

Ursula K. Le Guin

American · A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), Lavinia (2008)

Le Guin (1929–2018) is best known for her fantasy and science fiction, including the Earthsea books and The Left Hand of Darkness (1969). Lavinia, one of her last novels, is narrated by the Latin princess whom Aeneas marries in Virgil's Aeneid, a woman who never speaks a word in the poem.

Every book by Ursula K. Le Guin →

Pat Barker

British · The Silence of the Girls (2018), The Women of Troy (2021), The Voyage Home (2024)

Barker was born in Thornaby-on-Tees in 1943 and won the Booker Prize in 1995 for The Ghost Road, the last of her First World War trilogy. The Silence of the Girls retells the Iliad through Briseis, the captured queen given to Achilles as a prize. It was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2019, the same year as Circe. Two sequels followed.

Natalie Haynes

British · A Thousand Ships (2019), Pandora's Jar (2020), Stone Blind (2022)

Haynes was born in Birmingham in 1974, read classics at Cambridge and worked as a stand-up comedian before writing fiction. A Thousand Ships tells the Trojan War through the women caught up in it, from Hecabe to Penelope, and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2020. Stone Blind retells the Medusa story; Pandora's Jar is non-fiction about women in the Greek myths.

Emily Wilson

British-American · The Odyssey (translation, 2017), The Iliad (translation, 2023)

Wilson was born in Oxford in 1971 and is a professor of classics at the University of Pennsylvania. Her Odyssey, published by Norton, was widely reported as the first English translation of the poem by a woman. She often translates as “slaves” the people older versions called “maids” or “servants”, saying earlier translations worked hard to make slavery invisible. Her Iliad followed in 2023.

Jennifer Saint

British · Ariadne (2021), Hera (2024)

Saint is a British novelist whose first book, Ariadne, tells the story of the Cretan princess who helped Theseus kill the Minotaur and was abandoned by him on Naxos. She has since retold the lives of Elektra, Atalanta and Hera, and published This Immortal Heart in 2026.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Indian-American · The Mistress of Spices (1997), The Palace of Illusions (2008), The Forest of Enchantments (2019)

Divakaruni was born in Calcutta in 1956 and moved to the United States to study. The Palace of Illusions retells the Mahabharata through Draupadi, the princess married to all five Pandava brothers. The Forest of Enchantments does the same for the Ramayana through Sita.