Description
Newly Re-recorded. The epic tale that has captured the human imagination for nearly three thousand years. Homer's epic chronicle of the Greek hero Odysseus' journey home from the Trojan War has inspired writers from Virgil to James Joyce. Odysseus survives storm and shipwreck, the cave of the Cyclops and the isle of Circe, the lure of the Sirens' song and a trip to the Underworld, only to find his most difficult challenge at home, where treacherous suitors seek to steal his kingdom and his loyal wife, Penelope. Favorite of the gods, Odysseus embodies the energy, intellect, and resourcefulness that were of highest value to the ancients and that remain ideals in out time.
Reviews
...The story of Odysseus's return from the Trojan War has been around for a very long time and is still read, sometimes under duress, in the original Greek or in translation to some modern language. It has lots of strange characters, lots of bloodshed, and a true superhero trying to get back home to a virtuous wife. What's not to like? John Lee reads Samuel Butler's translation very well. It's hard to maintain any suspense when Homer keeps telling you what's going to happen, but Lee fights the good fight. His pacing is excellent, improving on the momentum of the slowly developing story. His voice seems just right to recount the adventures of a man being led about by Zeus's daughter. R.E.K. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
The Nation ...
"[Robert Fitzgerald's translation is] a masterpiece . . . An Odyssey worthy of the original."
The Yale Review ...
"[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."
from the Introduction by Seamus Heaney...
"[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."
