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  • Published: 30 January 2003
  • ISBN: 9780141965505
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 416

The Odyssey




Penguin Classics relaunch

The epic tale of Odysseus and his ten-year journey home after the Trojan War forms one of the earliest and greatest works of Western literature. Confronted by natural and supernatural threats - shipwrecks, battles, monsters and the implacable enmityof the sea-god Poseidon - Odysseus must test his bravery and native cunning to the full if he is to reach his homeland safely and overcome the obstacles that, even there, await him.

This edition is a revised translation by D. C. H. Rieu of the translation done by his father, E. V. Rieu, in the first Penguin Classic to be published. Contains a preface by D. C. H. Rieu and an introduction by Peter Jones. Also includes a map, explanatory footnotes, a combined glossary and index, as well as suggestions for further reading of acclaimed criticisms and references.

  • Published: 30 January 2003
  • ISBN: 9780141965505
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 416

Other books in the series

The New Penguin Book Of American Short Stories, From Washington Irving To Lydia Davis
A Dog's Heart
The Black Tulip
The Lady of the Camellias
Selected Poetry
On Sparta
Venus in Furs
Man and Superman
Botchan
Military Dispatches
The Prelude

About the authors

Homer

Homer, name traditionally assigned to the author of the ILIAD and THE ODYSSEY, the two major epics of Greek antiquity. Nothing is known of Homer as an individual, and in fact it is a matter of controversy whether a single person can be said to have written both the ILIAD and THE ODYSSEY. Linguistic and historical evidence, however, suggests that the poems were composed in the Greek settlements on the west coast of Asia Minor sometime in the 8th century BC. Homer was a Greek poet, recognized as the author of the great epics, the Iliad, the story of the siege of Troy, and the Odyssey, the tale of Ulysses’s wanderings.

Robert Fagles

Robert Fagles was Arthur W. Marks ’19 Professor of Comparative Literature, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He was the recipient of the 1997 PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His many translations include Sophocles’s Three Theban Plays, Aeschylus’s Oresteia (nominated for a National Book Award), Homer’s Iliad (winner of the 1991 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award by The Academy of American Poets), and Homer’s Odyssey. Robert Fagles passed away in 2008.