Possibly the most famous siege of all, one that gave rise to perhaps the apotheosis of epic poetry in the form of Homer’s “Iliad” and the lasting image of the Trojan Horse which finally secured victory for the Greek besiegers after ten years of stalemate. Trojan Horse, Achilles' heel, the face that launched a thousand ships, Greek gift and Cassandra, have all passed down into our modern usage, as well as ones drawn from "The Odyssey" such as siren's voice, between Scylla and Charybdis and lotus eaters.
Heroic figures such as Ajax, Achilles, Hector, the quixotic passions of the Gods, the perfidious women such as Helen and their noble antithesis such as Hecuba and Andromache making impassioned pleas to save their children from sacrifice by the victors. All of this has passed down and still resonates over a score of centuries later.
The historical and archeological record is fairly minimal, so we have our knowledge of events passed down to us largely through art, in the form of Homer's epic poem. We have drama rather than reportage. We have developed characters rather than historical agents. And we have meter and rhyme.
*
"Three Dreams In The Key Of G" has three female voices in a state of siege. One a young mother in sectarian Northern Ireland, just after the Good Friday Peace Agreement has returned paramilitary fighters from both sides back into the domestic realm for an uneasy peace there. The second a Waco-like siege in Florida, as the FBI, DEA and ATF surround a compound full of women, which they see as a threat to all of mankind. The third is in laboratories all over the globe, the Human Genome is being besieged by scientists as they try and uncover its code for life.
 |
| The siege will be lifted 26/07/2018 |
Published by Dead Ink Books
Available from Amazon and all good book shops in the UK
