APHRODITE
Phoenicia
Rogerson
On Sale
Date: November 11, 2025
9781335081421
Hardcover
$30.00
USD
ABOUT
THE BOOK:
From the award-winning author of Herc,
an enrapturing feminist tale that brilliantly reimagines the story of Aphrodite
and how she transformed herself, from a lowly outsider to the darling goddess
of love, for readers of Madeline Miller and Jennifer Saint.
Aphrodite saw the gods on Mount
Olympus and decided she wanted a piece of what they had. Only problem is, she’s
not a goddess, just a lowly being supposed to remain in a distant cave, keeping
the threads of Fate woven neatly. But Aphrodite’s never let anyone tell her
what to do…
Weaving herself a web of lies
and careful deceptions, she convinces everyone she’s the goddess of love whose
rightful place is among the Olympians, who lord it over everyone else at the
top of the world, but under the stifling rule of Zeus. For the first time she
has the best of everything, and friends, peers, even loved ones. Only being a
goddess isn’t quite like she thought. Those who oppose Zeus tend to disappear,
or worse. And one day, Aphrodite decides she’s had enough…
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR:
Phoenicia
Rogerson is the award-winning author of
Herc,
which won the 2024 Somerset Maugham Award for young writers and was chosen as
one of Waterstones' Best Books of the Year in 2023. Though she is altogether
mortal with a rather less checkered past than Hercules, she’s had a lifelong
infatuation with Greek mythology and is greatly enjoying being able to claim
her book purchases are for work. She lives in London.
SOCIALS:
Website: https://www.phoeniciarogerson.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thatphoenicia/
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/thatphoenicia
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/22913755.Phoenicia_Rogerson?from_search=true&from_srp=true
BUY LINKS:
Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/p/books/aphrodite-phoenicia-rogerson/fff380a988f22439
B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/aphrodite-phoenicia-rogerson/1146412380
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Aphrodite-enthralling-retelling-feminist-mythology-ebook/dp/B0DJX334VG
EXCERPT
Aphrodite
I
I’m a liar, to begin with.
Well, if I’m being exceedingly honest
with you – and I am trying – I was
nothing at all, to begin with. Then I was my father’s testicles. Then the
weaver of Fate itself, which is when the lying started. After that, it all got
a bit complicated.
I was the daughter of Ouranos. The
daughter of Zeus. The daughter of no one at all. A winner, a loser, though
never much in between. The world standard of beauty and a crone, both. Olympus’
very own it-girl. Maybe the worst wife in all of history. A lover, a friend, a
co-conspirator. A snitch. Selfless – once or twice. A bitch – more than twice.
A monster, a villain, a victim – if you must. A good mother, a bad mother, a really bad mother. Lonely and famous and
beloved and alone. Precious and worthless. A rival, a cheat. Afraid, often, and
terrifying, also often. Oh, and I started a war. That’s very important.
The goddess Aphrodite. I was that too. I
don’t think I am
anymore. Look, it’s all very knotted.
Maybe I should start from the beginning.
First, there was Chaos, which meant
something different then to what it does now. The time of Chaos was empty. It
was a blank canvas for the optimists and an endless sinkhole for the
pessimists. It was a time of absolutely nothing. I suppose I was nothing then,
but we all were, so I won’t hold that against her.
Chaos was empty, until she met Nyx. I
like to think that the two of them were in love, but I’ve never met my
grandmothers, so I can’t say for certain. The two of them created the earth and
the seas and the sky, and they had three children to gift them to.
Their daughters received the sea and the
earth, and they were happy with them.
Their son wasn’t, as is the way of
youngest children. He wanted to be the king of a world consisting of only five
people, so they let him.
My father, given the world like a toy so
he’d play nicely with his sisters. I suspect he was spoiled rotten, but then I
quite like being spoiled, myself. And he did ask, before he took. He spoke with
such conviction about the glittering future he would bring, the life he would
spread across this world, that they believed him.
Ouranos became the first king of this
world. He took his sister to be his wife and he made good on his promises.
Together – let’s not give him all the credit; he didn’t carry their children –
they filled the world with life. They brought forth the Titans, beings more
powerful than even they were, who could control the elements around them more
easily than breathing. And they brought forth the Cyclopes, and the
Hecatonchires – the hundred-handed ones – who Gaia loved and who did not ask
for power, only a life, which meant Ouranos did not respect them. He thought
them irrelevant to the world, because they didn’t demand to own it. They lived
between the oceans and created beautiful wonders with all the energy they saved
from fighting.
I don’t know how many children they had
together. It doesn’t matter. All that really matters is it was one child too
many.
It’s always the youngest son who has the
most to prove.
Their youngest was a Titan, Cronus. He
wanted to be king too, only Ouranos wasn’t like his mothers. He didn’t want to
give up what was his.
Cronus asked for power; his father said
no. Cronus did not ask a second time.
So the world came to know a new word:
war.
It didn’t last long, that first war. It
couldn’t. All the Titans could be counted on fingers and toes.
Cronus armed himself. He went to the
Cyclopes and asked for their support. He promised them positions in his new
order, new lives beneath the sun instead of deep below the sea. He told them he
would respect them as their father never did. And he let their conversation be
heard just enough to build fear in his father.
It’s a bold strategy, to tell your enemy
that you’re coming, but it works well with the men in my family. They’re so
afraid of it, it eats away at them, into their very bones, and they forget that
they’re anything other than the position they hold.
Ouranos ordered the Cyclopes sent to
Tartarus, a prison in the underworld he’d had to create personally, because one
had never been needed before.
(It’s a problem when you’re an immortal
fighting other immortals. You have to be careful about who you piss off because
there’s no getting rid of them. They’ll be there, hating you. Forever.)
How Cronus himself escaped being tied up
in proto-damnation is beyond me, but he did. I suspect his mother helped. He
promised her – how they promise! – he would free her sons, bring them to the
power they deserved. When Cronus was king, everyone would live equally in a
utopia, just below him.
He had his people behind him. He had his
shining vision for the future. He had the weapons and the belief. It was only a
matter of time.
He followed his father across the land,
over the oceans, waited for the perfect storm to be whipping around them, for
winds too loud for words – I know that for certain. I made my entrance soon
enough.
I think it’s unlikely they’d have had
much to chat about, anyway. When you get to weapons at dawn, what do you say?
I want power!
No,
me!
No, me!
They were both armed, but Cronus’ reach
was longer. That’s been true of every new generation I’ve seen, that they’re
just a little bigger than their parents, trying to prove they’re better in the
most
pointless of ways.
Cronus carried a sickle. I don’t know
what my father’s weapon was. He lost.
There was no point in aiming to kill.
There never has been, for us. Instead, Cronus thought of the worst shame he
could possibly imagine, and he castrated his father.
Chopped his balls off.
De-testicled him.
I’ve heard every possible variation of
the phrase, some with great solemnity and some with a snigger, and I’ve never
been able to explain why I’m not laughing.
I can tell you now, though.
Those
balls were me.
I grew from them. I was born from them.
They were me and I am them and that will always be the truth. That is my beginning.
I made my debut at the end of the first
great war, in a storm unlike any other, as the world turned itself upside down
trying to find its way in the new order. All of this is true, yet my birth is
reduced to a punchline.
I hid it for so long, not wanting my
entire existence to be reduced to one man’s shame, but I’m over that now. I’m
much more famous than him, after all.
I’ve always wondered how Cronus managed to castrate him so neatly. It was only my father’s testicles that made me
– call my knowing that feminine intuition, if you want – but Cronus used a sickle.
How? Were they hanging so low? Was
Ouranos’ stance so wide because he needed the world to see his mighty balls?
What possible physical arrangement leads to one man being able to castrate
another with a weapon made for cutting wheat?
Cronus would have had to practise, but he
can’t have. Surely he had better things to do in the war, and I’ve met some of his generals. I can’t
imagine them offering themselves up for the chop.
That one is a mystery for the ages, I’m
afraid, but it doesn’t matter, because now I’m here. That’s it. All of the
relevant history before I arrived. Done.
Cronus lifted his arms in mighty victory
and bellowed so that all around him could cheer and crown him the new king of
everything. Like his father, he went home and married his sister, ready to fill
the world with people who looked just like him.
Ouranos, newly ball-less, gave an
anguished cry.
‘You think yourself so smart, so
powerful, but one day you will be just like me, dethroned by your own
children.’
Cronus looked at his father’s crotch. ‘I
will never be just like you, will I?’
He ordered Ouranos tied and bound in
Tartarus, that prison of his own making, never to be seen again.1
So distracted were they by their
respective shouting that the testicles fell into the ocean, instantly swallowed
by the swells of the waves, pulled down into utter blackness, presumed lost.
Wrong.
1 For a
certain value of never. We are immortals, after all. —A
Excerpted from Aphrodite
by Phoenicia Rogerson. © 2025 by Phoenicia Rogerson, used with permission
from Hanover Square Press, an imprint of HarperCollins.
