The Iliad
Book description
When Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey appeared in 2017-revealing the ancient poem in a contemporary idiom that "combines intellectual authority with addictive readability" (Edith Hall, The Sunday Telegraph)-critics lauded it as "a revelation" (Susan Chira, The New York Times) and "a cultural landmark" (Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian) that would…
Why read it?
2 authors picked The Iliad as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
This book is an epic about a war fought over a woman (Helen, the “face that launched a thousand ships”), yet this is the first major translation by one. Emily Wilson’s translation sounds fresh and up-to-date yet stays closer to Homer than the versions I encountered growing up.
I love how Wilson treats Homer’s women, avoiding the clichés and derogatory language used by previous translators. And her work has the narrative drive that Homer deserves, making this very old, very familiar story a real page-turner.
From Rachel's list on ancient goddesses heroines from a woman’s viewpoint.
Honestly, just dive right in at the beginning. Homer’s epics were the earliest Greek stories to be written down (in around 800 BCE). They drew on traditions passed down by word-of-mouth for generations before that, and they shaped almost everything that came after.
The Iliad is set towards the end of the Trojan War. Against a vast background of violent battles and claims about heroic valour we get a story of the dysfunction that runs riot as Achilles takes offence and withdraws from the fighting.
Emily Wilson’s extraordinary translation manages to balance simultaneously the unironic grandeur of Homer’s world and…
From Greta's list on proving that Greek myth (still) matters.
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