I've felt overwhelmingly conflicted writing this review because who sits down and decides to review The Odyssey?
It feels faintly ridiculous, slightly egotistical, and even a little arrogant.
This is one of the oldest and most influential works of literature in existence. It's survived for close to three thousand years, shaped the stories we tell and given us creatures, characters and expressions that remain part of our language today. Odysseus has made it through wars, empires, the rise and fall of entire civilisations and several thousand years of scholarly argument, and now, it seems, he also has to make it through my book review.
The difficulty in reviewing a book this ancient is that it's nothing like reviewing a novel published last Tuesday. The Odyssey was created for a world radically different from ours. Its original audience understood its gods, customs, social hierarchies and ideas about heroism in ways we simply can't in the 21st century. It came out of an oral storytelling tradition and was intended to be heard rather than read silently over several evenings while drinking tea and wondering when Odysseus might finally exercise a little restraint.
Then there's the question of translation. Unless we read Ancient Greek, we're never responding to Homer alone. We're responding to Homer as interpreted and recreated by somebody else. Every translator makes decisions about tone, rhythm, vocabulary, repetition and meaning. Even the version of Odysseus we meet can change according to the person introducing him to us.
I first studied the complete text at university decades ago. At the time, I approached it as a student of philosophy: attentive to structure, mythology, language and historical context, and very conscious that I was reading one of the great works of the Western canon.
I returned to The Odyssey through Emily Wilson’s translation and decided to ask myself a slightly unfair but revelatory question: if this story were published today, how would I respond to it?
I didn't want to ignore its age or judge ancient Greece according to every moral expectation of the present. That would be both lazy and pointless. I simply wanted to give myself permission to read it as a reader rather than standing at a respectful distance from it as a monument.
And Emily Wilson’s translation made that possible.
When The Odyssey begins, the Trojan War has been over for 10 years, but Odysseus hasn't not returned to Ithaca.
He's now been away from home for two decades: 10 years at war and another 10 years trying to get back. During that time, his wife, Penelope, has been left in an impossible position. She doesn't know whether she's a wife or a widow, and more than 100 suitors have descended upon her home to wait for her to choose one of them.
They're eating their way through Odysseus’s wealth, drinking his wine, mistreating members of his household and behaving as though Ithaca already belongs to them.
Penelope continues to delay them, but she can't do that forever.
Her son, Telemachus, has grown up without his father. He's old enough to recognise what the suitors are doing but hasn't developed the confidence or authority to stop them. The opening books follow his search for news of Odysseus and his first rather uncertain steps towards adulthood.
Odysseus himself doesn't appear until Book Five, when we find him trapped on Calypso’s island. She offers him comfort, beauty and immortality, but he still longs for home. Eventually released, he reaches the Phaeacians and tells them the story of everything that's happened to him.
This is the part most of us know, even if we've never read the poem: the Lotus Eaters, the Cyclops, Circe, the journey into the Underworld, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis and the forbidden cattle of the Sun God.
What I'd forgotten was how much of the famous adventure is told retrospectively by Odysseus himself.
Odysseus is telling his story to people whose sympathy he needs. He needs their hospitality and their help getting home, so naturally he presents himself as clever, resilient, courageous and repeatedly burdened by the poor decisions of other people.
Maybe everything happens exactly as he says it does. But still, I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that the only surviving member of the expedition is also the person controlling the account.
Convenient, really.
Emily Wilson begins her translation with the words: “Tell me about a complicated man.”
That description echoed with me throughout the book because Odysseus is complicated, and not always in ways that make him particularly likeable.
He's brave, resourceful and extraordinarily quick-thinking. He can talk his way into or out of almost anything. He understands people, notices weakness and knows exactly which version of himself a particular moment requires.
The encounter with Polyphemus is the clearest example. Odysseus’ plan for escaping the Cyclops’s cave is brilliant. He gives his name as Nobody, blinds Polyphemus and hides his surviving men beneath the Cyclops’s sheep. It's clever, tense and deservedly one of the most famous episodes in literature.
But then Odysseus reaches his ship and ruins everything by shouting his real name back across the water.
Why? Because it's not enough to have escaped. Polyphemus must know who defeated him.
His men beg him to stop, but Odysseus can't bear the thought of such an impressive victory going unattributed. Polyphemus then calls upon his father, Poseidon, and the journey home becomes longer and far more deadly.
It's difficult to listen to Odysseus complain about his suffering without occasionally wanting to remind him that some of it might have been avoided if he hadn't needed a giant round of applause from the Cyclops he'd just blinded.
This is where the poem became much more interesting to me on this reread. Odysseus isn't a hero because he's consistently good. He's a hero because he survives and because he possesses the qualities his culture admired: courage, cunning, eloquence, endurance and the ability to defeat his enemies.
Reading him now, I found myself admiring his mind while remaining deeply suspicious of the man using it.
Penelope has no ships, monsters or gods to defeat, but hers might be the more difficult journey.
For 20 years, she lives with uncertainty. She can't grieve her husband because she doesn't know that he's dead. She can't expect his return because each year makes that less likely. Meanwhile, the suitors occupy her home and pressure her to make a decision that will determine both her future and her son’s inheritance.
Her famous plan to weave a burial shroud during the day and secretly unravel it each night is a lovely piece of strategy. She appears to be cooperating while ensuring that the work, and the subsequent deadline she's set for choosing a husband is never completed.
The moment that most convinced me of her intelligence comes after Odysseus returns. She doesn't immediately accept that the stranger standing before her is her husband. Why would she? She's lived for years in a world of rumours, tricks and opportunistic men.
She orders their marriage bed to be moved, knowing that the real Odysseus would object because he built it around a living olive tree. It's the one detail an impostor couldn't know.
I loved this more than any sweeping declaration or tearful reunion. Penelope and Odysseus recognise each other through intelligence. They belong together because neither of them is easily fooled, not even by the other.
Emily Wilson’s translation completely altered my experience of the poem.
The language is clear, energetic and wonderfully readable. It doesn't sound as though everybody is delivering a speech from the top of a marble staircase. The characters speak like people rather than monuments, and the story moves with far more urgency than I remembered from my university reading.
That doesn't mean Wilson has turned it into a contemporary novel. The gods, rituals, repeated phrases and unfamiliar social customs are still there. What she's removed is the layer of unnecessarily grand English that can make ancient literature feel far more remote than it needs to be.
Her translation also allowed the humour to come through. The Odyssey is often funny, sometimes intentionally and sometimes because Odysseus possesses the confidence of a man who's never once considered that he might not be the most interesting person in the room.
The adventures remain enormously entertaining. Polyphemus is truly frightening. The Sirens are fascinating precisely because they don't tempt Odysseus with sex or wealth but with knowledge. They understand that the surest way to lure this particular man to his death is to promise that he can know everything.
I also enjoyed the shape of the second half much more than I expected. Once Odysseus reaches Ithaca, the monsters disappear and the story becomes quieter, slower and more psychologically tense.
He returns in disguise and begins working out who's remained loyal. Recognition happens gradually. His old dog knows him. His nurse recognises a scar. Telemachus has to accept that the father he's imagined all his life is now standing in front of him. Penelope refuses to believe until she has proof that belongs only to them.
The scene with Argos, Odysseus’s old dog, remains one of the most moving moments in the poem. Argos has waited 20 years for his master. He recognises him immediately, even in disguise, but Odysseus can't openly respond without exposing himself. Argos sees him one final time and dies.
Wilson is also much clearer about slavery than many earlier translators. She doesn't soften the position of enslaved people by casually calling them maids or servants. That decision changes the way we read the household and makes some of the closing violence impossible to excuse or brush aside.
I found that honesty revelatory. It doesn't tell us what to think, but it does ensure that we understand who has freedom and who doesn't.
Odysseus is offered extraordinary alternatives, including immortality with Calypso, but chooses to return to a small and imperfect island where he'd grow old. For all his vanity and appetite for adventure, he ultimately wants to belong somewhere.
There's something very human in that. After all the monsters, shipwrecks, battles and boasting, what he wants most is his own bed, his own land and the people who remember who he was before the world knew his name.
The difficulty with rereading The Odyssey as though it were published today is that its age explains some of its weaknesses without making them disappear.
This was an oral poem, and repeated phrases, descriptions and rituals had a purpose. They helped the poet perform an enormous story and helped the audience follow it. I understand that. I can appreciate the technique and still admit that, as a modern reader, there were moments when another feast, sacrifice, formal greeting or retelling tried my patience.
The pacing can also be erratic. Telemachus occupies the opening books before Odysseus appears. Some of the famous adventures pass surprisingly quickly, while other scenes stretch much longer than expected. The final portion, after the slaughter of the suitors, feels rather hurried considering how long we've waited to get there.
He fascinated me throughout, but I didn't always enjoy his company.
He frequently blames his men for failing to obey him, and in several instances they absolutely deserve the blame. Opening the bag of winds wasn't their finest hour. Neither was eating the Sun God’s cattle after being very clearly told not to do so.
However, Odysseus’s own pride and curiosity also places them in danger. He insists upon entering Polyphemus’s cave when his men would rather take the food and leave. He reveals his name after their escape. He repeatedly behaves as though his desire for knowledge, glory or recognition is worth the risk to everyone travelling with him.
He comes home alone, which is tragic. It's also worth asking whether the version he tells us that he was the wise leader continually failed by foolish men, is the whole truth.
Penelope’s fidelity is essential to her worth. Odysseus, meanwhile, spends considerable time with Circe and Calypso and returns expecting his marriage to remain intact. His situation with Calypso is clearly complicated by captivity and an enormous imbalance of power, but the broader double standard remains.
The suitors are appalling. They abuse the customs of hospitality, consume Odysseus’ property, humiliate his household and plot to murder Telemachus. I wasn't exactly hoping they would be sent away with a stern warning.
But even so, the slaughter is brutal. It moves beyond justice and into something much darker, particularly once there's no possibility of escape.
The deaths of the enslaved women are worse. They're punished for their relationships with the suitors despite living within a household where they possess little freedom and where powerful men make the rules. The poem treats their deaths as part of restoring order. However, I couldn't.
Perhaps that discomfort is part of what made Wilson’s translation so valuable. She didn't allow me to hide from the scene behind polite or antiquated language.
I'm still not entirely comfortable reviewing The Odyssey. Giving one of the foundational texts of Western literature anything less than unqualified praise feels rather like marking the Parthenon down because the roof needs work.
A classic should be able to survive disagreement. It should be read with curiosity rather than obedience. We should be allowed to admire it, question it, laugh at it, become impatient with it and occasionally want to tell its hero to stop shouting his name at angry giants.
This reread gave me much more than I expected. Emily Wilson’s translation felt fresh without being flippant and accessible without making the poem feel simple. She brought me closer to the people inside the myth, especially Penelope, Telemachus and the deeply complicated character attempting to find his way home.
She also reminded me how relevant translation is. I'd studied The Odyssey in full decades ago and believed I I had a good grasp of it, but Wilson showed me a different poem hiding inside the one I remembered.
I hope her translation encourages more readers to return to books they dismissed as too old, too difficult or too closely associated with compulsory study. There are extraordinary stories waiting inside the classics, but sometimes we need a new voice to open the door.
The Odyssey didn't leave me with the same unquestioning admiration I once had for it. I noticed the repetition more. I struggled with Odysseus more. I found the violence and the treatment of enslaved women much harder to absorb into a triumphant homecoming.
After almost three thousand years, it still gave me plenty to argue with, and perhaps that's one of the reasons we're still reading it.
🌊 Read this if you enjoy epic adventures filled with gods, monsters and impossible journeys
🏛️ A legendary warrior attempting to return home after the Trojan War
🏹 Cunning plans, dangerous temptations and a kingdom overrun by rivals
🏠 Homecoming, identity, loyalty and the enduring pull of family
🧵 Complex characters including the resourceful Odysseus and intelligent Penelope
💭 Pride, fate, hospitality, revenge, mortality and the consequences of our choices
⚠️ Contains war, death, slavery, execution, torture, sexual coercion, animal harm and graphic violence.
Book Details
Homer's Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson
Paperback ISBN
978-0393356250 — W. W. Norton trade paperback edition published in Australia on 1 November 2018.
Hardcover ISBN 978-0393089059 — W. W. Norton first hardcover edition of Emily Wilson’s translation published internationally on 7 November 2017 and released in Australia on 2 March 2018.
eBook ISBN
978-0393634563 — W. W. Norton eBook edition of Emily Wilson’s translation.
Audiobook ISBN
N/A — the unabridged Audible Studios digital audiobook narrated by Claire Danes is primarily identified by its Audible product code rather than an ISBN.
Genre
Epic Poetry; Classical Literature; Ancient Greek Literature; Adventure; Mythology; War Literature; Philosophical Literature; Oral Literature
Subgenre
Homeric Epic; Heroic Epic; Homecoming Narrative; Quest Literature; Mythological Adventure; Maritime Adventure; War Homecoming Literature; Ancient Greek Poetry; Oral-Formulaic Poetry; Foundational Western Literature
Tropes / Literary Threads
Warrior attempting to return home; long and perilous voyage; gods intervening in mortal lives; hero in disguise; faithful wife awaiting her husband; son searching for his father; kingdom overrun by unwanted suitors; encounters with monsters.
Publisher
W. W. Norton & Company — Emily Wilson’s English translation was first published in hardcover by W. W. Norton in 2017. The trade paperback followed in 2018.
Series
Standalone epic poem.The Odyssey is traditionally read alongside Homer’s The Iliad, which recounts events during the Trojan War, but it is not part of a formally numbered modern series.
Formats Available
Hardcover; Paperback; eBook; Unabridged Digital Audiobook; MP3-CD Audiobook; Norton Critical Edition; Norton Library Edition..
Audiobook Narrator
Claire Danes
Audiobook Length
Approximately 13 hours 32 minutes — unabridged Audible Studios digital audiobook edition.
Original Release Date
Approximately the late eighth or early seventh century BCE — the precise date and circumstances of the poem’s composition remain uncertain because it developed from a much older oral storytelling tradition.
Emily Wilson Translation Release Date
7 November 2017 — W. W. Norton first hardcover edition published in the United States.
Australian Release Date
2 March 2018 — Australian release of the W. W. Norton hardcover edition.
Page Count
592 pages — W. W. Norton trade paperback edition translated by Emily Wilson.
Where to Buy Homer's Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson
📚 Amazon
Affiliate Disclosure
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. If you purchase through my Amazon affiliate links, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. I also encourage supporting Australian booksellers such as QBD Books, independent booksellers, and self-published authors whenever possible.
Danielle Robinson is a literary critic and writer whose
work explores literature through the
lens of atmosphere, memory, culture, and emotional experience. Holding a double degree in philosophy and theology, she combines academic insight with a deeply refined aesthetic sensibility shaped by more than three decades working across the creative industries as an internationally published, multi-award-winning makeup artist, fashion stylist, and interior stager.
She reads widely and rigorously, reading and reviewing more than 200 books each year as both an ARC reader and commissioned critic. Through Silk & Sentences, Danielle approaches literature as something immersive and lived with — not simply stories to consume, but works that shape the way we think, feel, and move through the world.
She writes from her semi-rural Queensland home, where she lives with Alex, her husband of 33 years, their dogs Oscar and Paige, and an ever-growing library of books.
Comments