The Odyssey - (Puffin Classics) by Homer (Paperback)

About the Book

A modern retelling of the Homerian classic. The Trojan War is over, and Odysseus must now face the hungry one-eyed giant Polyphemus, the vengeful sea-god Poseidon, the sorceress Circe, and many other dangers on his long and perilous journey home.

Book Synopsis

Embark on one of the greatest adventures ever told, the epic journey of Odysseus, hero of Ancient Greece. . .

After ten years of war, Odysseus turns his back on Troy and sets sail for home. But his voyage takes another ten years and he must face many dangers--Polyphemus the greedy one-eyed giant, Scylla the six-headed sea monster and even the wrath of the gods themselves--before he is reunited with his wife and son.

Brilliantly retold by award-winning author, Geraldine McCaughrean, this accessible adaptation brings Homer's timeless tale to life with clear, engaging language and fast-paced storytelling.

Review Quotes

"[Robert Fitzgerald's translation is] a masterpiece . . . An Odyssey worthy of the original." -The Nation

"[Fitzgerald's Odyssey and Iliad] open up once more the unique greatness of Homer's art at the level above the formula; yet at the same time they do not neglect the brilliant texture of Homeric verse at the level of the line and the phrase." -The Yale Review

"[In] Robert Fitzgerald's translation . . . there is no anxious straining after mighty effects, but rather a constant readiness for what the occasion demands, a kind of Odyssean adequacy to the task in hand, and this line-by-line vigilance builds up into a completely credible imagined world."
-from the Introduction by Seamus Heaney

About the Author

Geraldine McCaughrean has written over 160 other books, including A Little Lower Than Angels, which won the Whitbread Book of the Year Children's Novel Award in 1987, A Pack of Lies, which won the Guardian Prize and Carnegie Medal in 1989 and Gold Dust, which won the Beefeater Children's Novel Award in 1994. She has written retellings of notoriously tricky classics including El Cid, the Epic of Gilgamesh, Moby Dick and The Pilgrim's Progress. In 2004, she won a competition to write the sequel to J M Barrie's Peter Pan. And in 2006, Peter Pan in Scarlet was published to great acclaim.