Translator: Robert Fitzgerald
Published: 800 B.C.
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pages: 515
"Here there is no anxious straining after mighty effects, but rather a constant readiness for what the occasion demands, a kind of Odyssean adequacy to the task in hand." --SEAMUS HEANEYI found The Odyssey much more enjoyable than the first - mostly because I think Odysseus introduces a new theme in a bland setting (that only included honor and glory in The Iliad): family. And yet, the failings here are very similar to that of The Iliad.
Robert Fitzgerald's is the best and best-loved modern translation of The Odyssey, and the only one admired in its own right as a great poem in English. Fitzgerald's supple verse is ideally suited to the story of Odysseus' long journey back to his wife and home after the Trojan War. Homer's tale of love, adventure, food and drink, sensual pleasure, and mortal danger reaches the English-language reader in all its glory.
