The Odyssey: (the Stephen Mitchell Translation) Hardcover - 2013

âÈêSing to me, Muse . . .âÈë

It has been said that a myth is a story about the way things never were but always are. The Odyssey is the original heroâÈçs journey, an epic voyage into the unknown, and has inspired other creative work for millenniaâÈ'from ancient poetry to contemporary fiction and films. With its consummately modern hero, full of guile and wit, always prepared to reinvent himself in order to realize his heartâÈçs desireâÈ'to return to home and family after ten years of warâÈ'the Odyssey now speaks to us again across 2,600 years.

In words of great poetic power, Stephen MitchellâÈçs translation brings Odysseus and his adventures vividly to life as never before. Full of imagination and light, beauty and humor, this Odyssey carries you along in a fast stream of action and imagery. One-eyed maneating giants; irresistibly seductive sirens; shipwrecks and narrow escapes; princesses and monsters; ghosts sipping blood at the UnderworldâÈçs portal, desperate for a chance to speak to the living; and the final destruction of all OdysseusâÈçs enemies in the banquet hallâÈ'these stories are still spellbinding today. So, too, are the intimate moments of storytelling by the fire, of homecoming and reunion, fidelity and loveâÈ'all of greater value to Odysseus, and to us, than the promise of immortality.

Just as Mitchell âÈêre-energised the Iliad for a new generationâÈë (The Sunday Telegraph), his Odyssey is the noblest, clearest, and most captivating rendition of one of the defining masterpieces of Western literature. MitchellâÈçs muscular language keeps the diction close to spoken English, yet its rhythms re-create the oceanic surge of the ancient Greek.

The first translation to benefit from modern advances in textual scholarship, MitchellâÈçs Odyssey also includes an illuminating introductory essay that opens the epic still further to our understanding and appreciation and textual notes that will benefit all readers. Beautiful, musical, accurate, and alive, this new Odyssey is a story for our time as well as for the ages.

Details

• Title The Odyssey: (the Stephen Mitchell Translation)
• Author Stephen Mitchell (Translator); Homer
• Binding Hardcover
• Edition Tra
• Pages 375
• Volumes 1
• Language ENG
• Publisher Atria Books, U.S.A.
• Date 2013-10-01
• Illustrated Yes
• ISBN 9781451674170 / 1451674171
• Weight 1.67 lbs (0.76 kg)
• Dimensions 9.5 x 6.62 x 1.36 in (24.13 x 16.81 x 3.45 cm)
• Reading level 1050
• Library of Congress Catalog Number 2012050572
• Dewey Decimal Code 883.01

"Employing the five-beat, minimally iambic line he used for his translation of The Iliad (2011), Mitchell retells the first, still greatest adventure story in Western literature with the same clarity, sweep, and force.There are many more violent deaths in The IliadâÈ'thereâÈçs a war going on, after allâÈ'but nothing as ghoulishly terrifying (and starkly related by Mitchell) as what Polyphemus, the Laestrygonians, and Scylla do to OdysseusâÈç crew. Stephen King, eat your heart
out."