Odyssey

The first great adventure story in the Western canon, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty and power; about marriage, family and identity; and about travellers, hospitality and the changing meanings of home in a strange world. This vivid new translation—the first by a woman—matches the number of lines in the Greek original, striding at Homer’s sprightly pace. Emily Wilson employs elemental, resonant language and an iambic pentameter to produce a translation with an enchanting “rhythm and rumble” that avoids proclaiming its own grandeur. An engrossing tale told in a compelling new voice that allows contemporary readers to luxuriate in Homer’s descriptions and similes and to thrill at the tension and excitement of its hero’s adventures, Wilson recaptures what is “epic” about this wellspring of world literature. This book has deckle-edged (rough-cut) pages.

"The first version of Homer's groundbreaking work by a woman will change our understanding of it for ever... Emily Wilson’s crisp and musical version is a cultural landmark. Armed with a sharp, scholarly rigour, she has produced a translation that exposes centuries of masculinist readings of the poem.", "Wilson’s approach has been to translate the text in a way that resonates with today’s politics. Her translation, spare and provocative, will engage a new generation of students.", "... Emily Wilson proves an appropriately beguiling female translator... This is certainly an Odyssey for our moment … [a] swift, unornamented text.", "The joy of Homer is precisely the generosity and suppleness of the material, the fact that it resists being read in a single way. That’s why a new kind of guide through his wild landscapes, across his wine-dark seas, is to be welcomed.", "Wilson’s Odyssey feels like a restoration of an old, familiar building that had over the years been encrusted with too much gilt. Wilson translates as though translation is a moral choice — you owe fidelity not to the author, nor to the protagonist, but to the truth behind the words and the times. She scrapes away at old encrusted layers, until she exposes what lies beneath."

Emily Wilson is professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, she has also published translations of Sophocles, Euripides, and Seneca. She lives in Philadelphia.