Homer's Iliad is often considered a poem of blunt truthfulness, his characters' motivation pleasingly simple. A closer look, however, reveals a complex interplay of characters who engage in an awful lot of lies. Beginning with Achilles, Mark Buchan traces motifs of deception and betrayal throughout the poem. Buchan reads Homer's characters between the lies, showing how the plot is structured by individual denial and what cannot be said.

Mark Buchan has taught classics at the University of Washington, Princeton University, and Columbia University. He has also published on a wide range of topics within Greek literature and philosophy. His main scholarly focus has been on the Homeric poems. He lives in New York.