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    The Odyssey
    The Odyssey
    The Odyssey
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Odyssey

    Written by Homer

    Narrated by Cyril Taylor-Carr

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    About this audiobook

    The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the Iliad, the poem is divided into 24 books. It follows the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the Trojan War. After the war itself, which lasted ten years, his journey lasted for ten additional years, during which time he encountered many perils and all his crewmates were killed. In his absence, Odysseus was assumed dead, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus had to contend with a group of unruly suitors who were competing for Penelope's hand in marriage.


    The Odyssey was originally composed in Homeric Greek in around the 8th or 7th century BCE and, by the mid-6th century BCE, had become part of the Greek literary canon. In antiquity, Homer's authorship of the poem was not questioned, but contemporary scholarship predominantly assumes that the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed independently, and the stories themselves formed as part of a long oral tradition. 


     Scholars still reflect on the narrative significance of certain groups in the poem, such as women and slaves, who have a more prominent role in the epic than in many other works of ancient literature. This focus is especially remarkable when considered beside the Iliad, which centers on the exploits of soldiers and kings during the Trojan War.


    The Odyssey is regarded as one of the most significant works in the Western canon. The first English translation of the Odyssey was in the 16th century. Adaptations and re-imaginings continue to be produced across a wide variety of mediums. In 2018, when BBC Culture polled experts around the world to find literature's most enduring narrative, the Odyssey topped the list. Here is the great tale as an exciting extended Icon Audiobook!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIcon Audio Arts
    Release dateMay 10, 2022
    ISBN9798887673745
    Author

    Homer

    Two epic poems are attributed to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. They are composed in a literary type of Greek, Ionic in basis with Aeolic admixtures. Ranked among the great works of Western literature, these two poems together constitute the prototype for all subsequent Western epic poetry. Modern scholars are generally agreed that there was a poet named Homer who lived before 700 B.C., probably in Asia Minor.

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    Reviews for The Odyssey

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    • 5/5
      The Odyssey is well worth reading not only to experience a story that has so heavily influenced Western literature, but also because, as appalling of a hero as Odysseus may be, it's a fun story. In all its extravagance, it set the standard for epic adventures.I cannot recommend Emily Wilson's translation enough. It is beautiful and fluid. She maintains a poetic rhythm yet the language is modern and clear. It's worth the extra time to read it out loud so you can truly savor the language for both its flow and the way it captures the sentiments of the characters.For those with several Odysseys under their belt, I would still recommend this version, if for no other reason than to read her introduction. Her analysis of the story is brilliant.
    • 5/5
      I won't say too much about the actual story. Everyone already knows that stuff from freshman English and general knowledge of myths and literary tropes. It has monsters and heroes and true love and coming of age and an awesome scene with a trick arrow shot and 3 guys against the world. Give it a try if you haven't looked at it since you were 15.

      I'm not sure I had ever read the whole Odyssey before. In any case, I now have heard the whole thing performed by Ian McKellen. I suppose Homer on audio book is about as close as I'll get to the original, unless someone can point me to someone who does the audio book in ancient Greek... McKellen's narration was great, but I bought the book to listen to while driving, and it put me to sleep. The story was really quite exciting, even if it did drag on a little when Odysseus was planning his suitor revenge. I guess we skipped that part in 9th grade English. But Gandalf's voice seemed to be more suited for bedtime stories than distracting me from traffic jams. I know what I'll be listening to when I can't get to sleep though.

      The translation, by Robert Fagles, was excellent. There were some places where I was like "that seems really colloquial" but then I was glad because it really was easy to understand. I would use this translation if I ever needed to read Homer for some reason.
    • 5/5
      A really good read, though between this and the Iliad, I actually found the Iliad more engaging. The journey of Odysseus was over too quickly and the revenge too long. Still a great tale. Never did find the noxious overtones that certain modern commenters find in it (e.g. Sexism, etc). Rather I found a man who only wanted his home and could never fully reach it. Too vexed by fate and war that even when he found home and his beloved, his past overrode his sense. Bittersweet, as both Homeric epics are.
    • 4/5
      I can't really speak to the translation: I've read the Fitzgerald version, but that was several years ago and don't remember the specifics of the language.

      What we have here is a faithful and passionate rendering of the epic poem, which captures both the problematic nature of Odysseus's character and some of the more important features of the civilization. My feeling is that the early listener was meant to learn the values of the society through the trials and travails of Odysseus. Some of these values persist today in different forms: but the question of revenge is not really dealt with after the death of Penelope's suitors at her husband's hands. (Aeschylus wrestles with this in the story of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra).

      Don't be intimidated, this is very readable and one of the pillars of our civilization!!!

      Postscript 2: My third reading of this epic in the last eight years! My one additional insight from this reading is how closely the description of the slaughter of the suitors in the hall tracks with some of the gorier battle scenes in The Iliad. If the two epics are part of a continuum, the return of "Trojan War" Odysseus at the end brings his journey full circle.
    • 4/5
      Such a creative and fascinating story! To experience the Odyssey is to tread through dreams with your eyes wide open.
    • 5/5
      While I found Pope's poetry with its strong rhyming and regular meter appealing, I would recommend Fagles' modern translation over this unless the reader has a strong classical background. Not only does Fagles use the Greek, rather than the Roman, names but his writing style and word choice is more easily understood by the modern reader.On a trivial note, I have now read something which uses the word "whelm"!
    • 4/5
      I've read at least four versions of The Odyssey over my lifetime. There was the Classic Comic from the 1940s or 50s; a copy, maybe by Pope, in my high school library, which I barely understood; there was a paperback version read sometime in mid-life; then the 1996 Robert Fagles translation in pretty clear English; and finally this volume, translated a few years ago, in 2018 by Emily Wilson, and in iambic pentameter no less.I enjoyed each reading, still own both the Fagles and Wilson versions, but Wilson's is my clear favorite now.
    • 3/5
      This version of the Odyssey only gets three stars because Alexander Pope's translation of the Odyssey is one of the few books ever that actually made me fall asleep while reading it. Which is dangerous because the Easton Press edition is very heavy--its not a great one to have fall on your face. Part of this might be that I wasn't a big fan of Pope when I read him college, and another part is that its poetry from the 1700's. In any case, I think there are both better versions of the Odyssey, and better things written by Pope, to read. The story itself is pretty interesting, though similar to the Iliad, and the bible, all of the exciting bits and stories--the things they are famous for--only take up a small amount of the text itself.
    • 5/5
      I've loved The Odyssey since the first time I read it in school. If you've never read it or its been a while since you have, this is the translation to read.
    • 3/5
      A great classic. Another epic tale by Homer.
    • 5/5
      I love Emily Wilson's translation. It feels direct, letting the poet speak in my language. Where the story feels archaic, it is because of the story, not a layer of translation.

      The introduction is really useful for understanding the story. Long, but worth it.

      The last paragraph of the introduction is this invitation to the reader. Read this for her writing style but also for her approach to the book. The Odyssey is a book of hospitality and stories. Listen carefully.


      There is a stranger outside your house. He is old ragged, and dirty. He is tired. He has been wandering, homeless, for a long time, perhaps many years. Invite him inside. You do not know his name. He may be a thief. He may be a murderer. He may be a god. He may remind your of your husband, your father, or yourself. Do not ask questions. Wait. Let him him sit on a comfortable chair and warm himself beside your fire. Bring him some food, the best you have, and some wine. Let him eat and drink until he is satisfied. Be patient. When he is finished, he will tell you his story. Listen carefully. It may not be as you expect.
    • 4/5
      To atone for missing my Shakespeare last summer I tackled the mighty Odyssey...just kidding, it's actually something I've wanted to read for a very long time, especially since I was ripped off in high school by just being made to watch the atrocious 1990s TV show. Ugh.

      I'm so, so lucky to have had this version to read. Wilson's comprehensive introduction (which, I'll admit, made me groan internally until it started flying by) explains what makes her translation distinct from those before it: not just the iambic pentameter and familiar language, but the reexamination of translations long taken for granted. "A translator has a responsibility to acknowledge her own agency and to wrestle, in explicit and conscious ways, not only with the multiple meanings of the original in its own culture but also with what her own text may mean, and the effects it may have on its readers" (p. 88).

      Me being me, I most appreciated Wilson's dedication to being frank about slavery's prevalence and looking for nuance rather than modern stereotype in the depiction of women. She gives a few examples of how past translators have chosen to filter their own vision of Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachus, and others through their own cultural lenses, and states clearly where she has done the same rather than pretending she has produced an "exact" translation. It would be fascinating to have read an older translation side-by-side with this one.

      Now I'm itching to dip my toes into The Iliad, which I also haven't read.


      Quote Roundup
      These are a bit irreverent, since I was already familiar with many of the plot basics just by cultural osmosis.

      12:391-393: The gods sent signs--the hides began to twitch,
      the meat on skewers started mooing,
      raw and cooked. There was the sound of cattle lowing.
      If that isn't enough to make you vegetarian, I don't know what is!

      12:420-424: The waves bore off
      the husk [the hull of the ship] and snapped the mast. But thrown across it
      there was a backstay cable, oxhide leather.
      With this I lashed the keel and mast together,
      and rode them, carried on by fearsome winds.
      Odysseus invents windsurfing.

      19:14: Weapons themselves can tempt a man to fight.
      Apparently having a sword in the house increases the likelihood of death by sword. Hm. Why does that sound familiar? Oh, and it gets said three different times in three different ways. The ancient Greeks could clearly teach us a thing or two about weapons control...

      19:573-580
      I never knew that Penelope came up with the contest with the battle axes instead of "Clever" Odysseus.

      23:228-300: And when
      the couple had enjoyed their lovemaking,
      they shared another pleasure--telling stories.
      How many lit nerds over the years have loved this line?

      As a final note, The Odyssey goes down with Pride and Prejudice as having one of the most anticlimactic last lines in classic literature. Ah well, you can't have everything, can you?
    • 4/5
      The Mitchell translationStephen Mitchell is a translator of poetry rather than an academic classicist, and I was hoping that might be a good qualification for a readable version of the Odyssey: in practice, I wasn't disappointed by his effort, but I wasn't blown away, either. He doesn't really seem to pull anything out of the text that wasn't there in earlier versions, but he does achieve a reasonably consistent, agreeable style that isn't constantly reminding you that it is a translation. He adopts a kind of compromise between prose and verse, a pentameter that uses everything it can find in the metrical toolbox apart from iambs, and thus doesn't really sound like English verse at all, unless you listen very carefully. It's often even more homely and prosaic than Rieu's prose — an effect that is enhanced by Mitchell's decision to ignore the poet's use of fixed epithets, which he treats as mere metrical stuffing. But you do get the feeling that Mitchell must have had Rieu's translation in the back of his mind as he worked: where there's no obvious reason not to, he often uses very similar expressions.They came at last to the banks of a beautiful stream,where the washing basins were always filled with clear waterwelling up through them, to clean the dirtiest clothes.Here they unyoked the mules from the wagon and sent themalong the stream to graze on the rich, sweet clover,then lifted the clothes from the wagon and carried them downinto the basins, and each girl began to tread them,making a game to see who could finish first.Mitchell, from Book 6 In due course they reached the noble river with its never-failing pools, in which there was enough clear water always bubbling up and swirling by to clean the dirtiest clothes. Here they turned the mules loose from under the yoke and drove them along the eddying stream to graze on the sweet grass. Then they lifted the clothes by armfuls from the cart, dropped them into the dark water and trod them down briskly in the troughs, competing with each other in the work. E V Rieu, same passage from Book 6 The text itselfWhat you forget when you haven't read a work through for a long time is how it hangs together: the proportions and the sequence in which the story is told are often different from what you recall. I was taken by surprise by the way the foreground story takes place within a very tight timeframe of a few weeks at the end of Odysseus's long journey, whilst most of his earlier adventures are told very compactly in a story-within-a-story section where he is explaining himself to Nausicaa's father Alcinous. Odysseus's arrival in Ithaca and his revenge on the suitors, on the other hand, take up much more of the book than I remembered. I'd also forgotten what an obsessive quick-change artist Athena is in the story: she slips into and out of more disguises than even Sherlock Holmes can manage in one book. It seems a little pointless, since we always know it's her, and Odysseus and Telemachus soon get to recognise the signs as well.It's a marvellous story, of course, in a lot of ways, but it's interesting that it's very much a celebration of the value of peaceful domesticity, which is constantly regretting the human loss and material damage that go together with high adventure. Even the ghost of Achilles tells us that it's better to be alive as a serf than to be the most glorious of dead heroes. Of course, it does end with rather more brutal slaughter than most of us would wish to inflict upon even the most recalcitrant of uninvited guests, but even there the poet makes Odysseus stop and protest to the goddess a couple of times before he actually starts shooting his visitors.
    • 4/5
      As with The Iliad, I find myself once again shocked at the disparity between what I remember reading forty years ago in high school, and what actually transpires.

      For instance, I would have bet a lot of money that the death of Achilles and the entire Trojan Horse thing were both detailed toward the end of The Iliad. Obviously, I know now that I would have been wrong and would have paid out a lot of money.

      Similarly, after completing that book, I seemed to have remembered that no, those two scenes were near the beginning of The Odyssey, perhaps in the first two or three books (of the 24 in total), then all but the last book or two (so, maybe 19 or 20 books) would have detailed Odysseus' long trip home. And I would have sworn he left Troy and all the various delays totalled to another decade before he got home. And that he basically burst in just after his wife Penelope offered up the whole string-my-husband's-bow-and-shoot-an-arrow-through-a-dozen-ax-heads thing.

      So...no death of Achilles scene—though we do meet up with him later on in Hades—and the Trojan Horse deal gets a very brief mention. But Odysseus spends most of that decade hanging with Calypso, and only spends three years getting home.

      My god, no wonder humans are such lousy witnesses. I was so off on all of this.

      As for the actual story itself, it was good, and I enjoyed reacquainting myself with the adventures of Odysseus, but overall, I found this one to be much more repetitious (I think we get Penelope's story of weaving a shroud by day and unspooling it by night at least three times), and overall a little less fun. Maybe it was the lack of shenanigans by all the gods, with only Calypso, Poseidon, and Athena getting any significant air time.

      I still believe both these books are an essential read, and I will be also diving into Virgil's The Aenied...and might even follow that up with Beowulf. Have a bit of a taste for these epic tales right now.
    • 5/5
      Astounding. I've never read a translation like it.
    • 2/5
      I thought it was not pertinent.You can maybe dredge up 1-point to this read.If this was a 10-star rating system I'd perhaps score this title 5 out of 10 stars.It's a common classic.
    • 5/5
      Cool story.
    • 4/5
      I've really enjoyed Emily Wilson's various Twitter threads over the years comparing different translations from this epic, so I finally took the time to read her full translation. I did so carefully, reading just one book per day so as to make sure I took the time to let each word matter. Hers is an excellent interpretation, to my ear, anyway. 
    • 4/5
      I read this a long time ago and I remember liking it. It is definitely a classic
    • 5/5
      It's the Odyssey; you should probably read it. Fitzgerald's version is very readable, and not particularly scholarly, so it's ideal for actually reading. I doubt it's much use if you're looking for a trot to read alongside the Greek, but since I don't know Greek... well, it suits my purposes.

      Everyone who reads the thing seems to have an idea about the *one thing* the book is about, which is ridiculous, since even in translation you can see that it's a bunch of different stories stitched together with some cosmetic cover-up. Nonetheless, I have a theory for what one thing the book is about: the tragedy of hospitality. The moral code* is stressed throughout the book--be good to travelers and guests. Sometimes it's rationalized ("the guest might be a god!" or "Zeus orders it!"), and sometime not. But the big actions of the poem are all tied to being good to guests, and how it's just not actually possible. The two conclusions are Odysseus and crew slaughtering the suitors who, I will somewhat tendentiously argue, are guests; and the Phaeacians deciding that they have to place limits to their own kindness to guests. In other words, just as the Oresteia ends by 'resolving' the problem of mob-justice and revenge by setting up a formal judicial system, the Odyssey ends by resolving the problem of 'unwritten' laws of hospitality, by authorizing a weakening of them. I could really go out on a limb and say this is the ultimate end of the Trojan war: everyone is much more suspicious of everyone else, because too many people have abused social norms of kindness.

      I don't expect anyone to actually buy that, but I had fun coming up with the theory.


      * People like to say that Homer doesn't have morality the way 'we' have morality, because that makes them feel like a cool and revolutionary Nietzschean teenager. It is nonsense. If anything, the moral code presented in Homer is far more restrictive than that presented in, e.g., Dante, for the simple reason that the code in Homer is highly socialized, whereas that in Dante is entirely individual. There's no suggestion in Dante that doing wrong will bring down on you the wrath of other humans, which means you're free to go on being evil and take your chances on the afterlife. In Homer, people who do bad things suffer social consequences in this life. Okay, I'm overstating matters out of belligerence.
    • 5/5
      The Robert Fitzgerald translation of The Odyssey was my first introduction to Homer, way back in my freshman high school days, and although my study of ancient Greek in college led me to the opinion that his work is not the best Homeric translation available - see my review of The Iliad for more details about my devotion to Richmond Lattimore - it retains a special place in my heart. I can still recall how magical I found the story of Odysseus' homeward journey, after the Trojan War, the excitement of his many adventures, the terror of the many monsters he encountered. I still recall the thrill I felt, reading of Penelope's stratagems, and Odysseus' disguised return...Homer's two epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, are definitely works that I think every reader with an interest in the development of European literature should read, at some point. I feel fortunate indeed to have read one of them (The Iliad) in the original, but for those many who do not have that chance, the issue of translation is an important one. As mentioned, the Fitzgerald has a special place in my literary memory, and I find it a beautiful work, judged upon its own merit as poetry. English-language readers could do far, far worse than to pick it up. Fagles, I understand, is also widely (and justly) praised, although I have only read his translation of The Iiad. My own vote, for best translator, goes to Lattimore, and I think those readers wanting to get a translation as close to the original as possible, in both sense and structure, should give him a try. Still, this one by Fitzgerald will always pull at my heartstrings...
    • 5/5
      a wonderful New translation in meter, so it flows and reads like a song without overly flowery verse, and deep insight into what the Greek poets meant without distortion of a later morality and cultural lens. a joy to read.
    • 4/5
      A re-read of classic literature. In this sequel to the Iliad, Homer continues with the adventures of Odysseus in the Odyssey. Maybe it was the 4 years of Latin I took in high school but this never gets old.
    • 4/5
      This feels like a book that needs two distinct reviews.

      First, Emily Wilson's translation, which is wonderful. Just as Heaney moved Beowulf from "worthy work" to a fun read, Wilson's made The Odyssey eminently readable, while keeping it a formally structured long poem and apparently sticking scrupulously to the pacing of the original Greek. I had started reading other translations of this work but never actually finished them, so I'm delighted that this one now exists. And the maps, introduction, footnotes and dramatis personae all helped me follow a work that's heavy on reference and allusion.

      But I have to say I didn't get on very well with the content. Some of it is delightful, from learning that Greeks have appreciated wine, olive oil and the sea for longer than much of the world's had written records, to all the descriptions that weren't about Odysseus himself. But there's a degree of repetitiveness to the language that grated--Wilson's introduction explains why it was so in a work written to be performed but it still took away from my experience of reading this as written text--a few too many passages that consist of just listing characters from other Greek myths to the point that they felt like the Torah's "begats", and by the end I found the character of Odysseus dislikable enough to not care about his fortunes.

      I'm still glad to have read this. I didn't get anywhere near the exposure to Greek mythology that US schools seem to give, so much of the story was either new to me or connected dots that I'd picked up scattershot from English literature referencing them. And I have to say that I'm re-reading the Torah this year, which seems to be of approximately the same age, and found The Odyssey so much more sophisticated and compelling as a work of literature. But I can't exactly say that I _like_ this story.
    • 5/5
      A wonderful translation, easy to read and to understand. But thank goodness for the intro.Hard to believe but I've never read this before. And rather than get lost in the lengthy introduction, I jumped ahead and just began the tale itself. It was hard to put down and I sped right through it, but by the end I was thinking, "Boy, these people were weird", so thank goodness for that intro, which I started after finishing the main work. One of the first things mentioned is that no one in the ancient world, at any time, acted or spoke like these people. So that was one question answered.
    • 5/5
      Wilson's translation of the Odyssey is excellent, but the real value is her introductory material and notes, including the three maps of the world of The Odyssey and of the actual classical Greek world. As for the translation, my Greek is not adequate to comment but it reads very well, lively and yet true to the Homeric conventions. The pace is brisker than that of the archaic translations I have previously read, and more like contemporary English than some of the more modern. I even found myself sympathizing with different characters as I read. And I noticed some character development, in Telemachus, for example.
    • 5/5
      One of the single greatest books, EVER. Written.!!! !!! !!!

      #paganism_101
    • 4/5
      I had attempted to read The Odyssey once before and failed miserably. Since then I've learned just how important the translator is when choosing to read ancient classics. I'm happy that I found a different translation to try which made this a much more enjoyable and engaging read. Given that the story comes from a time of oral tradition I decided to try out the audio book, which I think was the right idea but the wrong narrator for me. More on that below.For anyone who doesn't know, The Odyssey was written by Homer somewhere around 800 BC. The epic poem relates the story of Odysseus and his trials on his return journey home after the Trojan war. For such a simple premise, the scope is vast. It has a little bit of everything (magic, monsters, gods, suitors, shipwrecks, action) and touches on so many themes (violence and the aftermath of war, poverty, wealth, marriage and family, betrayal, yearning for ones home, hospitality) that is is easy to see why this poem is so important and how it has inspired many stories to this day. One of the best and worst parts about this version was the introduction to the poem. The intro goes into great detail about the controversies about the poem's origins and dives deeply into the poem's many themes. This was great for someone who already knows the story and wants to learn more before getting into Odysseus's tale. For those that don't like spoilers, it's best if you skip the introduction and read/listen to it after you're done with the poem. Fair warning for audio book listeners - the introduction is roughly 3.5 hours long and I was definitely getting impatient to hear the poem long before it was done.I listened to the audio book narrated by Claire Danes. This has really driven home that I need to listen to a sample of the narrator before choosing my audio books. Claire does an adequate job when reading the descriptive paragraphs but just didn't work for me when it came to dialog. All her characters, male and female, sounded the same and were a bit over done so it was a challenge to keep who was speaking apart. She is going on my avoid list for future audio books.
    • 3/5
      This was a book I decided to tackle with audiobook and I thought it came across better listening to a narrator. Will give the Iliad go to.
    • 5/5
      Very enjoyable. I also loved listening on a Playaway, because, as my friends know, being able to read a book and knit, or fold clothes, or sew, or work in the yard is just bliss.If you haven't read this since high school or college, give it a whirl. It's worth the time. I think listening would be much easier given the style.