Goodreads asked Alexander Geiger:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Alexander Geiger My college roommate and I recently got together for a mini-reunion and as usual promptly fell into an argument. He claimed that all the great stories were already written by the ancient Greeks 2,500 years ago and we are simply retelling, embellishing, and messing up their wonderful tales. Immediately and instinctively, I took the opposing point of view. But the more we argued, the weaker my position became. By the end of the evening, he convinced me of at least two things: (1) All stories, in the final analysis, are about human beings (even stories starring gods); and (2) Human beings are the same today as they were two millennia ago, even though we live in very different worlds.

They ancients had the same desires, fears, hopes, ambitions, uncertainties, and shortcomings as we do today. Wouldn’t it be terrific, I asked myself, if I could somehow find a narrator able to recount these exciting, rollicking tales of derring-do, of loves won and lost, of good triumphing over evil (and vice versa), but do it from a modern perspective? I was ready to write my next book. All I had to do is find a narrator who was there, in the middle of the action, but able to observe the ancient world through modern eyes.

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