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.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Genre: Literary Fiction