I am Pandarus by Michiel Heyns

ISBN: 9781868427758

Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2017

Soft cover, 239 pages

In a London gay bar, a charismatic stranger accosts an editor still raw from his lover's abandonment. The stranger insists he is the modern avatar from Pandarus, intent on getting his version of events published to account the unflattering portrait of him that Shakespeare has given in the world. And so begins Michiel Heyns's eight novel, a modern retelling of the story of Troilus and Criseyde, set during the tenth year of the Trojan war, with both sides of the conflict exhausted and the supreme warrior Achilles sulking in his tent. This urbane and sparkling rendition of the classical tale is interspersed with meeting between the editor and Pandarus, as the latter supplies installments of his tale. I am Pandarus combines shrewd domestic comedy with heroic tragedy in an original exploration of the nature of love, friendship, warfare and loss.