Starting from Scratch

With an “inimitable voice combined with flawless erudition,” this new analysis of the Aeneid “illuminates its subject with a modern light” (Le Monde).

From the bestselling author of The Ingenious Language comes a meditation on rebuilding, recovery, and renewal that is also a fascinating portrait of antiquity’s most complex and surprisingly modern hero.

In times of peace and prosperity, one can turn to Homer to learn valuable life lessons, to experience the thrills and terrors of war, and to read about hair-raising adventures in distant lands. But when things do not go as planned, when we unexpectedly find ourselves at the center of an epoch-defining upheaval, then, writes Andrea Marcolongo, we must look to Virgil’s Aeneas for an example of adaptability and resilience.

In Marcolongo’s fresh, nuanced portrayal, Virgil’s Aeneas emerges as a multiform, deeply human hero, striking in his vulnerability and capacity for empathy. His journey of rebirth and rebuilding, from the ruins of Troy to the shores of Italy, teaches us that when all seems lost, with hope, perseverance, and a little bit of luck, we can seek and find new beginnings.

“Marcolongo is today’s Montaigne . . . There is wisdom and grace here to last the ages.” —André Aciman, New York Times–bestselling author of Call Me by Your Name, now a major motion picture

“A deep look at our all-too-human fragility . . . An impassioned and enthralling book.” —Bon Culture (Italy)

“Through her personal reacquaintance with [the Aeneid] at a time of great distress, Andrea Marcolongo has brought it, as it were, back into the conversation and outside the confines of academia . . . An excellent translation by Will Schutt brilliantly serves Andrea Marcolongo’s passionate endorsement of a work of literature written two millennia ago.” —Reading in Translation

“Andrea Marcolongo has brought us a book from the future.” —La Stampa (Italy)