The Odyssey by Homer

The Odyssey

$18.95
Sale price  $18.95 Regular price 
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The Odyssey by Homer

University of Chicago Press

The Odyssey

$18.95
Sale price  $18.95 Regular price 
In stock
The greatest of all epics, soon to be a film by Christopher Nolan!

"This may be the best translation of The Odyssey yet."The Telegraph

A magnificent feat of translation, hailed by classicists and poets alike as a "momentous achievement" "thrilling," "rich and rhythmical," "superb," "mesmerizing," "searingly faithful--yet absolutely original."

With this edition of Homer's Odyssey, the celebrated author, critic, and classicist Daniel Mendelsohn brings the great epic to vividly poetic new life. Widely known for his essays on classical literature and culture in The New Yorker and many other publications, Mendelsohn gives us a line-for-line rendering of The Odyssey that is both engrossing as poetry and true to its source. Rejecting the streamlining and modernizing approach of many recent translations, he artfully reproduces the epic's formal qualities--meter, enjambment, alliteration, assonance--and in so doing restores to Homer's masterwork its archaic grandeur. Mendelsohn's expansive six-beat line, far closer to the original than that of other recent translations, allows him to capture each of Homer's dense verses without sacrificing the amplitude and shadings of the original.

The result is the richest, most ample, most precise, and most musical Odyssey in English, conveying the beauty of its poetry, the excitement of its hero's adventures, and the profundity of its insights. Supported by an extensive introduction and the fullest notes and commentary currently available, Daniel Mendelsohn's Odyssey is poised to become the authoritative version of this magnificent and enduringly influential masterpiece.
Book Details
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press
ISBN:
9780226849225
Binding:
Paperback
Pages:
560
Authors:
Homer
Published Date:
2026-04-20
Language:
English
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About Homer

Credited with composing the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer is the ancient Greek poet to whom both epics are traditionally attributed. Ancient tradition placed him in Ionia, possibly on the island of Chios or in Smyrna, and dated him to roughly the eighth century BCE. Modern scholarship debates both his historical existence and the manner in which the poems took shape. Both works emerged from a long tradition of oral composition.

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