Plato’s Reckoning

From the James Tait Black-winning author of Justine and The Book Collector – a slave-scribe in the household of Plato confronts the cost of obedience.

Athens, 404 BC. A slave-scribe in the household of Plato is offered her freedom – in exchange for the philosopher’s life. A short, intense literary novel from the James Tait Black-winning Alice Thompson.

Athens, 404 BC. For ten years Thalia, captured in war and sold into the household of the philosopher Plato, has been his scribe – taking down his sentences before he has finished thinking them. She has learned to be useful, to be quiet, and to be forgotten in a room. Now the city has fallen. Plato’s cousin Critias has seized power, and the household is no longer a refuge. A tutor walks the courtyard at night. A slave-girl unsettles even her mistress. A brother labours, half-forgotten, in the silver mines. And somewhere in the gaps between what Thalia writes down and what she remembers, a question is gathering that she will not be allowed to leave unanswered.