Madeline Miller’s debut novel The Song of Achilles has been awarded this year’s Orange Prize, which honors women’s excellence in fiction. The American writer’s book is inspired by Patroclus, a character whose death in The Illiad greatly upsets Achilles. “I wanted to explore who this man was and what he had meant to Achilles that he would be so lost without him,” she said. The chairman of the judges panel said, “The fact that there is a really moving, intense, and passionate love affair at the heart of it, that you completely believe in—that in a way lures you in.”
