Author(s): Homer, Emily Wilson

Poetry | Translated fiction | Greece

The Odyssey is a poem mainly focuses on the Greek hero Odysseus (known as Ulysses in Roman myths) and his journey home after the fall of Troy. It takes Odysseus ten years to reach Ithaca after the ten-year Trojan War. In his absence, it is assumed Odysseus has died, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus must deal with a group of unruly suitors, the Mnesteres (Greek) or Proci, who compete for Penelope's hand in marriage.

Review: "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." -- Charlotte Higgins, Poetry Book of the Day - The Guardian
"... Emily Wilson proves an appropriately beguiling female translator... This is certainly an Odyssey for our moment ... [a] swift, unornamented text." -- The Spectator
"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." -- Financial Times
"It is immensely satisfying to see The Odyssey in the hands of such a careful and creative scholar who can pore over the semantic nuances of Homer's Greek as well as those of her own English. Considerations of gender aside, perhaps Wilson's greatest achievement is to disprove the increasingly held view that versions of ancient texts require an established poet to be parachuted in, like a literary James Bond, to rescue their English lines from the prosaic. For a translation of The Odyssey that knows what it is talking about and sings as it speaks, this is the one to read." -- New Statesman
"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." -- Times Literary Supplement
"The real reason why Emily Wilson's version of this nearly three-millennia-old poem is so important is that it combines intellectual authority with addictive readability." -- Edith Hall - The Sunday Telegraph
"... Emily Wilson's brilliant introduction to her new translation of The Odyssey shows the classical world as capable of feminist inflections." -- The Observer
"... a perceptive reading of The Odyssey... Readers who want to get a feeling for the poem will find Wilson's translation full of insights..." -- London Review of Books
"Wilson's translation is a superb achievement and a striking departure from the tradition of Homeric translation into English... [She] has produced a wonderfully distinctive-and modern-version of the poem." -- London Evening Standard
"All the artistic choices work. I must admit when I heard we were reviewing The Odyssey, I thought 'Oh no, it's going to be wordy and dull' [...] but it wasn't, it really felt fresh and alive and exciting." -- Sophie Hannah - BBC Radio 4, Saturday Review
"... Emily Wilson's terrific new translation..." -- The i Paper
"Emily Wilson wipes the dust of ages from Homer's prose in her new translation of The Odyssey. Accessible and entertaining, she provides an elegant rendering of the classic." -- Peter Campbell, Favourite reads of 2017 - as chosen by scientists - The Guardian

Author Biography: Emily Wilson is a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been named a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome in Renaissance and early modern studies, a MacArthur Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow. In addition to Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, she has also published translations of Sophocles, Euripides, and Seneca. She lives in Philadelphia.