this source material, Miller sought to write a story about who Patroclus was, and what he meant to Achilles. In addition to the Iliad, Miller drew inspiration from the writings of Ovid, Virgil, Sophocles, Apollodorus, Euripides, and Aeschylus, as well as accounts of Achilles' childhood friendship with Patroclus and his martial training. On her decision to depict Achilles and Patroclus as lovers, Miller explained: Miller depicts Achilles and Patroclus as the same age, contrasting Homer's depiction of Patroclus as significantly older than Achilles. Miller drew inspiration for this departure from the Achilleid by Statius, stating that "to me, the two have always resonated as peers, so that was the tradition I followed." The Song of Achilles took Miller ten years to write; after discarding a completed manuscript five years into her writing, she started again from scratch, struggling to perfect the voice of her narrator. The Song of Achilles was published as Miller's debut novel on September 20, 2011, by Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins. Reception , The Song of Achilles has sold 2 million copies across various formats. The book's sales received a significant boost in 2021 after it was featured in a TikTok video, cited by The New York Times as an example of how "BookTok" and viral social media videos increasingly drive sales of literature. Reviewing The Song of Achilles for The Guardian, Natalie Haynes commended the novel as "more poetic than almost any translation of Homer" and "a deeply affecting version of the Achilles story." Mary Doria Russell similarly praised the novel in her review for The Washington Post, favorably citing its "prose as clean and spare as the driving poetry of Homer." In his review for The New York Times, Daniel Mendelsohn criticized the book's structure, and in particular, its tone. He compared the book unfavorably to young adult literature, describing The Song of Achilles as "a book that has the head of a young adult novel, the body of the Iliad and the hindquarters of Barbara Cartland." He also compared the novel's prose to SparkNotes and softcore pornography. In 2012, The Song of Achilles was awarded the 17th annual Orange Prize for Fiction. Carolyn Kellogg of the Los Angeles Times wrote that it was a surprise win, with Miller being "the dark horse in this year's race". Joanna Trollope, chair of the judges, commented, "This is a more than worthy winner—original, passionate, inventive