In the mid-’90s, Don Winslow had already published a handful of novels when he decided to fill the gaps in his literary education by reading through a list of the great books of world literature.
His intent was to broaden his reading beyond the African and military history he’d studied in college and graduate school and the crime fiction of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, whose works had led him to his writing career.
What he found in the Greek and Roman classics was something both familiar and new, Winslow says.
