Helen

by D.W. Buffa

Helen is a novel about ancient Greece from the age of Pericles to the end, or what was tantamount to the end, of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides wrote the history of the war and Plato wrote the dialogues which, along with the writings of Xenophon, are the main sources of what we know about Socrates and the origins of Greek philosophy. There are only a few allusions to the war in what Plato wrote and the history of Thucydides never mentions Socrates. Helen attempts to combine both the war and this new thing, this new way of looking at the world, which Socrates brought into being. Helen is the story of what Socrates was and what Athens became, the peak of ancient history and the peak of ancient, and perhaps not just ancient, thought, both of them together the origin and source of western civilization. No one has attempted to write such a novel before. The story is told through the eyes of a young woman, Helen, the daughter of the tyrant who ruled over Syracuse, the dominant city in Sicily. With the help of Herodotus, from whom she learns that there are different nations with different ways of life, a lesson which leads to the question about what the best way of life might be, she escapes the violence of her father. She finds a home with Empedocles, the pre-Socrates philosopher who for a time was the leader of the democracy in Agrigento, the second leading power in Sicily. From Empedocles she learns what the various pre-Socratics taught, but none of this satisfies her desire to understand the world. When Empedocles is forced to flee Sicily, she finds her way to Athens where she becomes the close confidant of Aspasia, the wife of Pericles. The first time she is invited to their home, she meets Socrates, the strangest man she has ever seen, and Alcibiades, who is easily the most attractive. Helen, a young woman of astonishing beauty and intelligence, is able to see everything that happens and through her relationship with Alcibiades and Socrates, to understand the real meaning of what she sees..

288 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 18, 2014

About the author

D.W. Buffa (full name: Dudley W. Buffa) was born in San Francisco and raised in the Bay Area. After graduation from Michigan State University, he studied under Leo Strauss, Joseph Cropsey and Hans J. Morgenthau at the University of Chicago where he earned both an M.A. and a Ph. D. in political science. He received his J.D. degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Buffa was a criminal defense attorney for 10 years and his seven Joseph Antonelli novels strive to reflect, from his own experience, what a courtroom lawyer does, the way he (or she) thinks, and the way he feels about what he does.

Buffa had been writing for pleasure for many years when Henry Holt and Co. decided to publish his first novel, The Defense, in 1997. The week it was published, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, the literary critic of the New York Times, called The Defense ‘an accomplished first novel" which ‘leaves you wanting to go back to the beginning and read it over again."

The Defense was followed by The Prosecution and then The Judgment, which was one of the five books nominated in 2002 for the Edgar Award as best novel of the year. While the first three novels are set in Portland, the author's fourth novel, The Legacy, takes place in San Francisco and is as much a political thriller as it is legal thriller. Star Witness tells the story of Stanley Roth, one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, who is charged with murder of his famous movie star wife.

Breach of Trust, published in 2004, was considered by one critic as "one of the few books that fifty years from now will really matter." It offers readers a scintillating look at Washington politics. Buffa's seventh Joseph Antonelli novel, Trial by Fire, was released in 2005; in this latest Antonelli book, the focus is on the media and the role that television "Talking heads" increasingly play in very high profile criminal cases. Publishers Weekly says of Trial by Fire, "In this intelligent, gripping legal thriller... fast moving dialogue and fine sense of characterization keep the reader hanging on for the ride."

The author's last several novels reflect a subtle shift in storyline from D.W. Buffa's original 'judicial' arena into the the broader one of politics. Buffa has built a new series around protagonist Senator Bobby Hart, an Antonelli-type everyday hero of strong moral fiber who is willing to take on "The Establishment" for the betterment of his constituents...

D.W. Buffa lives in Northern California.

Reviews

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd been looking for months for a narrative history of Ancient Greece and "Helen" I find is it. I've read many academic books on Greece and Athens but wanted to find a book that makes it comes alive and brings the famous philosophers and statesmen together as there were so many great figures who lived around the same time.

"Helen" tells the story of Greece through the eyes of a fictionalized daughter of the Tyrant of Syracuse. Fearing for her life after he kills her mother, she is rescued by Herodotus (the inventor of history) and taken to study with the philosopher Empedocles. After witnessing his faked death, jumping into a volcano, she
flees to Athens to live with Pericles & Aspasia and witnesses the trail by Cleon of Phidias and of Anaxagoras for irreligiousness. She argues with my favorite philosopher Democritus in Abdera, falls in love with Alcibiades and follows into war Alcibiades and Socrates in the battle of Potidaea against Corinth, part of the Peloponnesian war. She witnesses yet another trial, that of Aspasia, wife of Pericles. And falls victim to, but survives the Athenian plague. Finally she witnesses the fall of Athens after the attack on Sicily.

I loved this book and hope against hope they make a TV series based off of it in the same vein as "Rome".