The Odyssey

ISBN: 0226849228

Author: Homer

Condition: New

The greatest of all epics, soon to be a film by Christopher Nolan!This may be the best translation of The Odyssey yet."-Edith Hall, The TelegraphA 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 Homers 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 epics formal qualities-meter, enjambment, alliteration, assonance-and in so doing restores to Homers masterwork its archaic grandeur. Mendelsohns expansive six-beat line, far closer to the original than that of other recent translations, allows him to capture each of Homers 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 heros adventures, and the profundity of its insights. Supported by an extensive introduction and the fullest notes and commentary currently available, Daniel Mendelsohns Odyssey is poised to become the authoritative version of this magnificent and enduringly influential masterpiece.