Who was Homer? The author of the Iliad and the Odyssey. But male or female? One person or two people? Or several? And where did they live? Experts cannot agree.

Here is a version the experts did not think of. It is the 8th century BCE: a boy is born to a poor farming family on the Greek island of Ithaka. His parents believe he is weak and useless and will not live long, so they do not even give him a name. The boy survives but he is mocked by his family and by other children because he is physically weak, left-handed, and he stammers so much that he rarely completes a sentence. An unpleasant visitor thinks it's extremely funny to call the boy Ho Moros (the Stupid One) and it becomes his name.

When the boy’s grandfather pays a rare visit to his family, he sympathetically says that the boy’s name cannot possibly be Ho Moros but is rather Homeros (Homer) and predicts that he will have a great future. The grandfather gives the boy a lyre, a stringed instrument which at first Homeros cannot even play. Gradually he learns how to use it – provided that he keeps a safe distance from his family. Homeros encounters other local children whom we will meet as adults later in the story: his two sisters Chryseis and Briseis; Calypso who cruelly mocks his stammer; Thersites whom the other children mock mercilessly for his limp but who rescues Homeros from drowning; Melanthios, a vicious bully; and the glamorous Nausicaa who turns out to be a slave-girl and has been sold but nobody knows where.

When Homeros is about eighteen, Ithaka suffers a serious drought and crop failure. The island authorities consult the oracle at Delphi and are told to reduce their population by sending three hundred young men away in ships to build a new city in Africa. Homeros's father enthusiastically seizes the opportunity to be rid of his useless son. Thus begins a series of death-defying adventures, many of which Homeros later uses as inspirations for his stories.

Will Homeros overcome his stammer and become a successful singer and story-teller? And will he ever find the lovely Nausicaa and rescue her from slavery?