The Hymn to Dionysus

A timely and timeless reimagining of the story of Dionysus, Greek God of ecstasy and madness, revelry and ruin, for readers of The Song of Achilles and Elektra.

Raised in a Greek legion, Phaidros has been taught to fight for the homeland he's never seen and to follow his commander's orders at all costs. But when he rescues a baby from a fire at Thebes's palace, his commander's orders cease to make sense: Phaidros is forced to abandon the blue-eyed boy at a temple, and to keep the baby's existence a secret.

Years later, after a strange encounter that led to the death of his battalion, Phaidros has become a training master for young soldiers. He struggles with panic attacks and flashbacks, and he is not the only one: all around him, his fellow veterans are losing their minds.

Phaidros's risk of madness is not his only problem: his life has become entangled with Thebes's young crown prince, who wishes to escape the marriage his mother, the Queen, has chosen for him. When the prince vanishes, Phaidros is drawn into the search for him-a search that leads him to a blue-eyed witch named Dionysus, whose guidance is as wise as the events that surround him are strange. In Dionysus's company, Phaidros witnesses sudden outbursts of riots and unrest, and everywhere Dionysus goes, rumors follow about a new god, one sired by Zeus but lost in a fire.

In The Hymn to Dionysus, bestselling author Natasha Pulley transports us to an ancient empire on the edge of ruin to tell an utterly captivating story about a man needing a god to remind him how to be a human.

Praise for Natasha Pulley's THE MARS HOUSE

'Pure Pulley' STUART TURTON
'Joyful and profound' CATRIONA WARD
'Simply unputdownable' THOMAS D. LEE
'A work of staggering genius' IMRAN MAHMOOD
'Charming and funny and perfectly paced' TEMI OH
'A spiritual heir to Terry Pratchett' ROBIN STEVENS
'Book of the year for me' LAUREN JAMES

Few writers combine such warmth and heart with such consummate skill as Natasha Pulley... Reading her is both a joyful and profound experience - and The Mars House is her most daring, ambitious, and exciting book yet' CATRIONA WARD, Sunday Times-bestselling author of The Last House on Needless Street
Simply unputdownable - hilarious, ingenious, and full of warmth, The Mars House asks important questions about what it means to be human, and doesn't shy away from nuanced conversations about immigration, climate breakdown, and augmented reality. Plus it has talking mammoths and a very clever twist. What's not to love? THOMAS D. LEE, Sunday Times-bestselling author of Perilous Times
This is a book about language, how new society subcultures form, gender, mammoths, and space... I want to live inside Natasha Pulley's brain - and I would happily read a thousand more pages set on Mars. The incredible arranged marriage queer romance was just an added bonus. Book of the year for me LAUREN JAMES, Carnegie-shortlisted author of The Quiet at the End of the World
Already one of my favourite books of the year... There's palace intrigue, a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers plot, sassy footnotes, and also there are mammoths! It's a total delight from start to finish LITERARY HUB
Pulley astonishes in this thorny and addictive sci-fi romance PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Readers will appreciate all the delightful details of worldbuilding, character arcs, and slow romantic tension. Exquisitely layered and entertaining, Pulley's latest novel is a queer tale of planetary refugees, politics, and populist views (and mammoths).''Readers will appreciate all the delightful details of worldbuilding, character arcs, and slow romantic tension. Exquisitely layered and entertaining, Pulley's latest novel is a queer tale of planetary refugees, politics, and populist views (and mammoths) LIBRARY JOURNAL
Pulley has wrapped an enemies-to-lovers, fake-marriage romance in a fascinating sci-fi world package... Magnetic... Charming... Readers will have incredible fun reading about this slow-burn romance, the itch of two creepy background mysteries, and a delightful scene involving judgmental mammoths BOOKLIST

NATASHA PULLEY is the internationally bestselling author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. She has won a Betty Trask Award, been shortlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award, the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award, and the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, and been longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize.

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