Madame Socrate

A philosophical crime novel set during the time of Pericles by Gerald Messadié, international best-selling author of Moses, King David, The Man Who Became God and A General History of Antisemitism, among other works.

Socrates, the most famous of philosophers, is not afraid of death but he does fear his wife, Xanthippe. So do many of his illustrious peers - Sophocles, Phidias, Alcibiades, Aristotle and the great Anaxagoras, to name a few - when she decides to seek the perpetrator of a perplexing murder in the midst of the Athenian community. What follows reveals that the famed Golden Age of democracy and art, was really a weakened and diseased society, one in which aristocrats incessantly invented scandals that gave it a bad name. In this they succeed dramatically through Alcibiades, an impudent adventurer and favourite of Socrates. In an Athens riddled with spies and plagued by corruption, gossip and superstition, Xanthippe's murder investigation promises to be complex. When she at last unearths the truth, the iron hand of History itself closes in on the offender. Thus ends the most famous chapter of Ancient Greek history, and with it Socrates' desire to live.