The Odyssey - by Homer (Hardcover)

About the Book

"A landmark new translation of Homer's most popular epic by distinguished author and classicist Daniel Mendelsohn. In 1961, the University of Chicago Press published Richmond Lattimore's translation of Homer's The Iliad. For more than sixty years, it has served to introduce readers to the ancient Greek world of gods and heroes and has been one of the most popular and respected versions of the work. Yet through all those decades, Chicago never published a companion translation of the best-known epic in the Western canon, The Odyssey-until now. With his new Odyssey, celebrated author, critic, classicist, and translator Daniel Mendelsohn has created a rendering worthy of Chicago's unparalleled reputation in classical literature. Widely known for his essays bringing classical literature and culture to mainstream audiences in the New Yorker and many other publications, Mendelsohn eschews the streamlining and modernizing approach of many recent translations, focusing instead on the epic's formal qualities-meter, enjambment, alliteration, assonance-in order to bring it to life in all its archaic grandeur. In this line-for-line rendering, the long, six-beat line he uses, closer to the original than that of other recent translations, allows him to capture each Greek line without sacrificing the amplitude and shadings of the original. The result is a magnificent feat of translation, one that conveys the poetics of the original while bringing to vivid life the gripping adventure, profound human insight, and powerful themes that make Homer's work continue to resonate today. Supported by an extensive introduction, notes, and commentary, Mendelsohn's Odyssey is poised to become the authoritative English-language version of this magnificent and enduringly influential masterpiece"--

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"Mendelsohn's [translation] is much more ample; he has chosen a roomier, six-foot line that cleaves as close as possible to the original hexameter without losing the intricacies and force of Homer's language. The result is more languorous."
-- "The Guardian"

"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 available in the English language as it conveys the beauty of its poetry, the excitement of its hero's adventures, and the profundity of its insights."-- "Midwest Book Review"

"Whereas Wilson's lines are swift and spare, Mendelsohn's are prolonged and attentive. He pauses because Odysseus' plight demands that we pause; we need to pay attention to the condition that has befallen not just Homer, but will befall most all of us sooner or later."--Robert Zaretsky "Forward"

"This may be the best translation of The Odyssey yet.Daniel Mendelsohn's rendering of Homer's text is both highly readable and faithful to the original metre. It's impressive, thrilling stuff. . . . What I feel Mendelsohn has appreciated, in the way most of those versions have not, is the connection between the Odyssey's maritime content and the rolling effect of its broad-sweeping verse."

--Edith Hall "The Telegraph (UK)"

"Mendelsohn's poetic lines are substantially longer than those in the other translations. This is the distinctive feature of his translation--this desire to bring the density and full detail of the Greek language into English, not worrying about the need for longer poetic lines to make it happen. . . . Ultimately, I applaud Mendelsohn's new translation."-- "Mere Orthodoxy"

"This Odyssey is a gift, an act of true literary hospitality. Balancing ear and mind, Mendelsohn ushers the reader by every available device--the amplitude and charm of his introduction and notes, as well as the assurance and clarity of the tale's unspooling--into the strange familiarity and familiar strangeness of a distant world which still breathes its magic and insight so fully into our own."--Jonathan Lethem, author of Brooklyn Crime Novel

"Mendelsohn is gifted with a wonderful surefootedness of imagination, an almost mystic insight into both the homely and the terrible beauties of antiquity: how it must have looked, felt, smelled, and sounded to its ordinary and its superhuman denizens alike. He has given us a lithe, deft, psychologically nuanced Odyssey. Timeless, cadenced, thrilling, and humane."--Michael Chabon, author of Moonglow: A Novel

"Daniel Mendelsohn's Odyssey is a vividly rendered experience that feels inward and mesmerizing. It doesn't take us through a reportorial account of the adventures of Odysseus but deeply into the experience itself through an intense focus on speech and sounds, which are the essence of poetry. Highly recommended."--Joyce Carol Oates, author of Broke Heart Blues: A Novel

"It is a thrill to have Mendelsohn's searingly faithful--and yet absolutely original--new translation of The Odyssey. Moving us expertly through the hero's journey with profound learning and with a truly rare and exquisite attunement to the original's formal textures and thematic nuances, Mendelsohn's brilliant, supple, and radiant translation gives us not only the marvelously freighted yet buoyant craft itself, but the pulsing experience of its ongoing momentum and reach. His knowledge as a renowned classicist, his ear and eye for sound and image, his acuity in rendering the circuitous yet also self-arresting syntax (a journey of its own), and his ingeniously faithful line-by-hexameter-line rendering, make for what will surely be the edition for our time and beyond. The breathtaking introduction and notes are tours de force and finesse, a superb frame for this--yes, heroic--triumph."--Jorie Graham, author of To 2040

"Following the roundabout journey of its hero and the seductive rhythm of lines packed with music and meaning, Mendelsohn's fresh and vigorous translation reminds me that what is at the heart of Homer's epic--for all its sea-soaked adventures and creatures and gods--is entrancing poetry. His Odyssey is a homecoming worthy of the pleasure and dignity and endurance of the original."--Richie Hofmann, author of A Hundred Lovers

"This Odyssey brilliantly succeeds in its ambitious plan to provide a worthy companion for our time to Richmond Lattimore's classic Iliad. Mendelsohn's long and flexible dactylic lines are eminently readable while communicating the heft and dignity of what the Greeks called Homer's 'heroic' hexameter. With a scholarly and personal Introduction that sets out the major themes of the poem, Mendelsohn's Odyssey will put all who read (and teach) the poem in English in possession of the most illuminating insights of modern scholarship while equipping them to understand the epic sympathetically and to appreciate the artistry of this astonishing work of ancient art and its uncannily modern hero."
--Andrew Ford, author of Homer: The Poetry of the Past

"History's greatest adventure story brought to us anew by America's greatest living classicist --Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher novels

"Here is the timeless Homeric river remade with timely majesty, molecule by glistening molecule."
--Sebastian Barry, author of Old God's Time

"Neither jarringly contemporary nor distractingly archaic, Daniel Mendelsohn's brilliant and necessary translation of The Odyssey is a testament to the enduring power and grace and beauty of Homer's narrative."
--Francine Prose, author of 1974

"Daniel Mendelsohn's Odyssey is a majestic living poem, keenly responsive to the surge and subtlety of Homer's Greek. He conveys the dignity of an ancient aristocratic world as well as the timeless drama of homecoming, monstrous encounters, fidelity, and self-revelation. A momentous achievement."
--Rosanna Warren, author of So Forth: Poems

"The expertly crafted work of a true scholar-poet, Mendelsohn's rich and rhythmical version hews closely to the Homeric verse-line--it feels like the original. He brings into contemporary English not just the precise meaning of the Greek at every turn, but also fine-grained variations in the poem's soundscape, diction, pace, and speech-styles. Sharply focused on narrative nuance, lucid, vivid, and smart, this superb translation will entice new audiences to delight in the ancient epic."
--Richard P. Martin, Isabelle and Antony Raubitschek Professor in Classics, Stanford University

"Daniel Mendelsohn has accomplished something that no recent translator has done so well: a translation that shows a striking fidelity not only to the poem's language and thought but also to its formal properties. His approach makes this translation ideal for any class in which an instructor wants the students to have a full sense of the poetics of Homeric epic and other orally based literature."--Deborah Roberts, Haverford College

About the Author

Memoirist, critic, translator, and frequent contributor of essays to The New Yorker and TheNew York Review of Books, where he is Editor-at-Large, Daniel Mendelsohn is the author of ten books, including the international bestsellers The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, winner of the National Jewish Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic, an NPR and Kirkus Best Book of the Year. His other honors include the Prix Médicis in France and the Premio Malaparte, Italy's highest honor for foreign writers. In 2022 he was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Republic of France. He is currently the Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College.