After ten years the Trojan War is at a deadlock. Both sides are exhausted, while the Greeks are at each other's throats and reduced to eating limpets. Odysseus, cleverest of men, more than anything wants to return to Ithaka and his wife and son and orange grove. When Agamemnon, king of the Greeks, asks Odysseus to devise a scheme to settle the conflict once and for all, Odysseus comes up with the idea of the great horse. Yet many think the idea mad. The comic and iconoclastic Odysseus will have more than his ingenuity tested before he can set sail for home.

This deeply imagined and exquisitely written novel details the last days of the Trojan War, fleshing out the myth and mystery of one of the greatest stories in the Western canon.