The Odyssey
Ten years after the fall of Troy, Odysseus has still not come home to Ithaca. Suitors crowd his palace, eating through his estate and pressing his wife Penelope to remarry; his son Telemachus, now grown, sets out to find news of his father; and Odysseus himself, held on the goddess Calypso's island, finally builds a raft and turns toward home. Across twenty-four books, Homer's epic follows him through a sequence of legendary detours, the cyclops Polyphemus, the witch Circe, the underworld of the dead, the Sirens, the cattle of the sun, and a final shipwreck that washes him ashore on Phaeacia, where he tells the Phaeacian king the story we have just read. The Odyssey is one of the founding works of Western literature, composed in oral hexameter sometime in the eighth century BCE and now read across centuries of English translation, including the celebrated 2017 version by Emily Wilson, the first by a woman.
What you might want to know about The Odyssey
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Ten years after the fall of Troy, Greek king Odysseus is still trying to reach Ithaca, blown across the sea by the anger of Poseidon. While he tells his story in Phaeacia, his son Telemachus searches the Greek courts for word of him and his wife Penelope holds off a hall of suitors.
Yes. The Odyssey was composed by Homer in the 8th century BC and is in the public domain. Modern translations remain copyrighted.
Emily Wilson's 2017 translation is the first published English translation by a woman and is widely recommended for readers new to The Odyssey. Robert Fagles, Robert Fitzgerald, and Richmond Lattimore translations remain influential.
The Odyssey was written by Όμηρος, published in 1946 by U P H.
The Odyssey is 352 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Odyssey takes most readers 5 to 8 hours to finish.
The Odyssey is a standalone novel by Όμηρος, not part of a series.
The Odyssey is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
