The Iliad

By Homer, Martin Hammond,

Book cover of The Iliad

Book description

'The best modern prose translation of The Iliad' Robin Lane Fox, The Times

The first of the world's great tragedies, The Iliad centres on the pivotal four days towards the end of the ten-year war between the Greeks and the Trojans. In a series of dramatic set pieces, it follows…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Iliad as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

‘Wrath’ is the first word, beginning European literature not with the whimper of infancy but with a bang. The Iliad is ferociously intense, the action remarkably compressed in time and place, despite the poem’s great length (most of it takes place on the plain of Troy over two or three days). It is the quintessence of tragedy, declaring that the quest for glory, the hero’s duty, is inseparably bound up with humiliation and death. But it is a high-spirited tragedy, immensely energetic, with a lust for the ordinary appetites of life. Life is so good: that is what makes the…

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She Refused to Bow by Farida Manekshah,

A personal memoir which introduces the supernatural in the most natural way.

A message which came in a dream and brought you wealth. A sadhu's warning. The presence you feel as you pray at a grave. A well that dries up. The vision you see as you peer out of…

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