Costanza Casati – She Reads Novels

‘Not all of us are made for the dust. Those who are destined to rise will rise one way or another.’

Babylonia was something slightly different for me. Although I read a lot of historical fiction, I’m not often drawn to ancient history and I think this could possibly be the first novel I’ve read set at the time of the Assyrian Empire. I enjoyed Costanza Casati’s previous book, Clytemnestra, though, so I decided to give this one a try.

Babylonia is set in the 9th Century BC and tells the story of the legendary Semiramis, thought to be based on the historical Assyrian queen, Sammuramat. I had heard of Semiramis before beginning the book, but knew almost nothing about her or the legends surrounding her.

Semiramis, at least in this version of the story, is the daughter of Derceto, who kills her lover after he denies being the father of her child and then drowns herself. The orphaned Semiramis is taken in by a shepherd, Simmas, who raises her along with his own son. However, Simmas is not a loving father and treats Semiramis so badly that as she grows into a woman she begins to plan her escape from the village. She finally gets her chance to move on and start a new life when she marries Onnes, the new governor of Eber-Nari. Onnes is the illegitimate half-brother of King Ninus and through marriage to him, Semiramis becomes close to the royal household. Still not content with how far she has come, Semiramis sets her sights on the throne, but when it comes to politics she may have met her match in the King’s mother, Nisat.

Much of the focus of the novel is on the relationships between Ninus, Onnes and Semiramis and the different kinds of love and hate each one of them has for the other two. It’s a fascinating triangle to read about with the dynamics shifting and changing throughout the book and the use of multiple perspectives helps us to see that there’s more than one side to the story. These three are not the only interesting characters in the novel – I’ve already mentioned Nisat, but two others who stood out for me were Sasi, the King’s spymaster, and Ribat, a young slave who serves as Semiramis’ eyes and ears in the palace, while dreaming of becoming a scribe.

Because of my lack of knowledge of Semiramis and this period of history in general, I can’t really comment on how this novel compares to other retellings of the same legends. I suppose one of the advantages of writing about a mythical figure is that it does allow the author a lot of freedom in how they choose to approach the story. As for the Assyrian world Casati builds around Semiramis, it feels real, believable and rooted in historical research, from the descriptions of food and clothing to the accounts of battles and political intrigue. Casati writes so beautifully this novel really was a pleasure to read.

If any of you have read any other books about Semiramis/Sammuramat or the Assyrian Empire, I would love to hear your recommendations.

Thanks to Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 8/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2024.

Book 26/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

There are so many Greek mythology retellings around at the moment I thought this one might be too similar to others I’ve read recently (particularly Jennifer Saint’s Elektra) – but I needn’t have worried. With Clytemnestra, Costanza Casati makes a familiar story feel fresh and different, and as a debut novel it’s quite impressive.

Clytemnestra, Helen of Troy’s sister, is most often remembered as the wife of Agamemnon, the King of Mycenae who sacrifices their daughter Iphigenia to summon a wind so he can sail off to join the Trojan War. The heartbroken Clytemnestra takes her revenge on Agamemnon, which in turn provokes their other children, Electra and Orestes, to plot a revenge of their own. Casati’s novel does cover all of this, but a large part of the book is actually devoted to Clytemnestra’s early life as a princess of Sparta, daughter of Tyndareus and Leda, the King and Queen.

Like other Spartan women, Clytemnestra and her sisters are taught to fight, run and wrestle as children and grow up enjoying more independence and freedom than women elsewhere in Ancient Greece. This means that whenever life doesn’t go quite the way they hoped it would, they have the determination and the inner strength to take steps to change things. Early in the novel, a priestess delivers a prophecy that ‘the daughters of Leda will be twice and thrice wed…and they will all be deserters of their lawful husbands’ and over the course of the story we see this prediction begin to come true.

The thing I particularly enjoyed about this novel – and the thing that makes it different from others I’ve read – is that it focuses not just on Clytemnestra and Helen, whose stories are well known, but also on their other siblings. We get to know Castor and Polydeuces (sometimes called Pollux), their twin brothers who go in search of the Golden Fleece with Jason and the Argonauts, their sister Timandra, who marries King Echemus of Arcadia, and the two youngest sisters, Phoebe and Philonoe, who don’t have large parts to play but are not left out of the story either. By spending so much time on Clytemnestra’s childhood and her relationships with her family members, her character is given more depth, so that by the time she is married off to Agamemnon and the familiar, tragic part of her story is set into motion, we have come to know Clytemnestra well and to understand how her environment and upbringing have made her into the person she is.

Something else I found interesting was the portrayal of Clytemnestra’s first marriage to Tantalus, King of Maeonia, shown here to be a marriage made for love, in contrast to her later forced marriage to Agamemnon. Some versions of the Clytemnestra myth don’t make any reference to Tantalus at all, but including him here and showing how Clytemnestra’s life could have followed an entirely different course if he had lived adds another layer to the story.

Clytemnestra is written in present tense, which is never going to be a style I particularly like, but otherwise I found this book very enjoyable. I hope Costanza Casati will write more like this – if so, I think I’ll be adding her to my list of favourite modern Greek mythology authors, along with Natalie Haynes, Madeline Miller and Jennifer Saint.

Thanks to Michael Joseph for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.