--Sophie Hannah, BBC Radio 4, Saturday Review

"Wilson's translation is a superb achievement and a striking departure from the tradition of Homeric translation into English... [She] has produced a wonderfully distinctive and modern version of the poem."

--London Evening Standard

"The real reason why Emily Wilson's version of this nearly three millennia-old poem is so important is that it combines intellectual authority with addictive readability."

--Edith Hall, The Telegraph

"Wilson, the first woman to translate the text into English, does a magnificent job of bringing this archaic poem to a new audience. Fresh, crisp and thoughtful, the translation reflects smart choices across the board...Homer has long deserved better, as have his readers. Now we have it."

--i Paper

"...this is a really significant literary moment."

--Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime

"...this instantly hot-wired me into tears."

--Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent

"When I first read these lines...I was floored. I d never read an "Odyssey" that sounded like this. It had such directness, the lines feeling not as if they were being fed into iambic pentameter because of some strategic decision but because the meter was a natural mode for its speaker."

--The Spectator

"Wilson's Odyssey feels like a restoration of an old, familiar building that had over the years been encrusted with too much gilt. Wilson translates as though translation is a moral choice you owe fidelity not to the author, nor to the protagonist, but to the truth behind the words and the times. She scrapes away at old encrusted layers, until she exposes what lies beneath."

--Financial Times

"It is immensely satisfying to see The Odyssey in the hands of such a careful and creative scholar who can pore over the semantic nuances of Homer's Greek as well as those of her own English. Considerations of gender aside, perhaps Wilson's greatest achievement is to disprove the increasingly held view that versions of ancient texts require an established poet to be parachuted in, like a literary James Bond, to rescue their English lines from the prosaic. For a translation of The Odyssey that knows what it is talking about and sings as it speaks, this is the one to read."

---London Review of Books

"This new version of the Odyssey[...]is a fresh and worthwhile addition to the many existing translations, both for newcomers and veteran readers."

--Minerva

"...[Emily Wilson] has produced something extraordinary. In her hands, a work believed to have been written at around the end of the eighth century BC is transformed into something that might have been written yesterday: vivid, exciting and utterly immersive...If, like me, you've resolved to read more of the classics in 2018, this is the place to start."

--The Lady

"Like every translator, Wilson brings out some features more clearly than others. But altogether it's as good an "Odyssey" as one could hope for."

--International New York Times

"Wilson's version is an exciting one, all the better I guess for forcing us to think how approachable, how weird, how everyday Homeric language ever was."

--Mary Beard, Times Literary Supplement

"One of the great narratives of all time. You think you know it? Not until you read this one. Stunning translation/interpretation."

--Susan Hill, author of The Woman in Black

"There are many other [other than being the first female translation] stunning things about Wilson's translation, from the five-beat lines to the straightforward speech, free from the elegant clunkiness that we usually see when scholars try to carry words over from one language to another. But one of them is certainly an awareness of her own daring."

About the Author