Circe (novel)
A mythic fantasy retelling the Odyssey from Circe's perspective.
Circe is a mythic fantasy novel published in 2018 by American author Madeline Miller. The story takes place during the Greek Heroic Age and retells several Greek myths—especially the Odyssey—from the viewpoint of the witch Circe. The book creates or heavily alters many details of Circe’s life, such as her interactions with Hermes, the Minotaur, Jason, Medea, Odysseus, and Telemachus.
In the novel, Circe is the daughter of the titan Helios and the naiad Perse. She is seen as plain and powerless from childhood, ignored by her father and mistreated by her relatives. As a young girl, she witnesses the titan Prometheus being punished for giving fire to humans and secretly gives him nectar. She grows close to her younger brother Aeëtes, but he later leaves to govern his own kingdom. Circe falls for Glaucos, a mortal fisherman. She feeds him sap from magical flowers that grew in soil soaked with the blood of the titan Kronos, turning him into a god. But Glaucos becomes arrogant and rejects Circe for the nymph Scylla. Out of jealousy, Circe uses the same flower magic to turn Scylla into a six-headed monster. She confesses to Helios, who at first does not believe she has powers; Aeëtes then explains that he and his siblings are witches who can draw magic from such herbs. To avoid conflict between the Titans and the Olympians, Zeus forbids Helios and Perse from having more children. Aeëtes and his other children are monitored, but Circe is exiled permanently to the island of Aiaia for deliberately using magic against another god.
During her exile, Circe hones her witchcraft over centuries. She receives visits from the god Hermes, who becomes her lover. The mortal Daedalus escorts her off the island briefly, and while in Crete she helps her sister give birth to the Minotaur and uses her magic to tame the creature. Years later, the hero Jason and his wife Medea—Circe’s niece—arrive on Aiaia after stealing the Golden Fleece from Aeëtes and murdering Medea’s brother Absyrtus. Circe cleanses them of the crime and warns Medea that Jason’s interest is fading, but Medea ignores her. Later, Circe feels lonely and welcomes a group of sailors who come to Aiaia for food and rest. When they realize she lives alone, the captain rapes her. Circe turns all the men into pigs using her witchcraft.
- Author
- Madeline Miller
- Nationality
- American
- Genre
- Mythic fantasy
- Publication year
- 2018
- Setting
- Greek Heroic Age
- Known for
- Feminist reimagining of Greek myths from Circe's perspective
Lore & Background
After losing Odysseus, Circe blackmails her father Helios to negotiate an end to her exile. With Telemachus's help, she turns Scylla to stone and collects more magical flowers. Finding love with Telemachus, Circe uses the flowers' magic on herself to become mortal and live out her days traveling with him.
Reader's Guide
Circe has been widely recognized for its feminist themes and its reimagining of classical mythology from a female perspective. Reviews in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian praised the novel for its 'pleasurable' narrative, its contextualization within the MeToo movement, and its focus on the emotional life of a woman. In 2026, Goodreads named Circe the Best Fantasy Book of the Decade. The novel's significance lies in its ability to reframe ancient stories, giving voice to a traditionally marginalized character and exploring themes of power, isolation, and self-determination. Its critical and popular success has cemented it as a key work in the modern mythic fantasy genre.
Did You Know?
- The novel reimagines Circe's story from her own perspective, including her romance with Odysseus and his son Telemachus.
- Circe transforms sailors who rape her into pigs, sparing only those who behave with respect.
- In 2019, HBO Max announced an eight-episode adaptation written by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, but as of 2026 it remains in development limbo.
Literary Adaptations Across the Century
From James Joyce to Madeline Miller, Circe has served as a versatile literary figure spanning nearly a century of fiction. In Joyce's 1922 Ulysses, a brothel owner named Bella Cohen echoes the classical sorceress in a chapter modeled on Homer's episode. John Myers Myers's 1949 novel Silverlock has Circe transform her protagonist into a pig as punishment for his indulgent appetites. Julio Cortázar's 1951 short story borrows the name for a Buenos Aires woman whose fatal attraction to fiancés is revealed through poisoned sweets, a tale later adapted into a 1964 Argentine film starring Graciela Borges. David James Duncan's 1992 novel The Brothers K features a character named Circe who shows a man a mirror reflecting his pig form. Dan Simmons wove Circe into his 2005 science-fiction Olympos, while Rick Riordan's 2006 The Sea of Monsters reimagines her as an island spa owner who turns Percy Jackson into a guinea pig. Ukrainian writer Volodymyr Yermolenko's 2017 Odyssey adaptation sends Odysseus on a reverse journey to Troy, where he encounters Circe and Calypso again.
Comic Book Incarnations
In the DC Universe, Circe operates as a recurring antagonist to Wonder Woman, allied with the witchcraft goddess Hecate, and during the Silver Age she also clashed with Superman over a spurned romantic interest. A more intimate take appears in DC's Absolute Universe, where Circe becomes Diana's adoptive mother after Apollo leaves the infant in her care; initially reluctant, she raises Diana on the Wild Isle in Hell and instructs her in magic. Marvel's approach differs: the Eternal superheroine Sersi draws directly on Circe's myth, possessing similar shapeshifting powers, and her transformation of Odysseus's crew into pigs is framed not as malice but as a reaction to their rowdy behavior at a party. In the Disney-adjacent world of Carl Barks's 1963 comic Oddball Odyssey, the villain Magica de Spell poses as a modern descendant of Circe to lure Scrooge McDuck to a Mediterranean island. After discovering Circe's actual cave and magic wand, Magica transforms Scrooge, Donald, and the nephews into animals—a scheme undone only when the wand is destroyed, though later Barks stories reference formulas she claims to have salvaged from that same cave.
Screen Portrayals in Film and Television
Circe's screen history stretches from the 1954 film Ulysses, where Silvana Mangano plays the seductress holding Kirk Douglas's Odysseus captive while simultaneously portraying his wife Penelope, to the 1997 television miniseries The Odyssey, in which Bernadette Peters brings a flippant, seductive energy to the role. The 1968 European miniseries The Odyssey cast French actress Juliette Mayniel as the enchantress. In the 1983 Hercules film, Mirella D'Angelo appears first as an old woman who is rejuvenated by drinking the hero's blood. Animated interpretations range from the Ulysses 31 cartoon, where Circe attempts to build a tower housing all universal knowledge to surpass the gods, to the Hercules episode voiced by Idina Menzel, in which she wields a dragon-headed staff and transforms Icarus into a platypus, Hercules into a lemur, and Adonis into a peacock. The DuckTales episode 'Home, Sweet Homer' features Tress MacNeille as an anthropomorphic pig-Circe with a black cat, whose spells are reversed when Huey shatters her medallion. The 2013 series Atlantis also featured Lucy Cohu as Circe in two episodes.
Madeline Miller's 2018 Novel as a Landmark Retelling
In 2018, American author Madeline Miller published Circe, a novel that retells the life of the sorceress from her own first-person perspective, marking a significant departure from the many earlier adaptations that treated her as a supporting figure in Odysseus's journey. The book centers on her exile among the gods, her gradual discovery of magical powers, and her encounters with well-known mythological figures including Odysseus, Medea, and the Minotaur. By placing Circe at the narrative center rather than as an obstacle on another hero's path, Miller's novel inverts the traditional power dynamic of the Homeric episode. It arrives at the tail end of a long lineage of literary treatments—from Joyce's Bella Cohen to Riordan's spa-running enchantress—that have each refracted the myth through their own cultural lens. Miller's choice to give the minor goddess a full interior life, spanning from divine childhood to her island solitude, positions the novel as both a personal character study and a reclamation of a figure who, in the original epic, exists primarily to test a male protagonist's resolve.
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