The Odyssey

Name: The Odyssey
Brand: Naxos
Availability: InStock
Rating: 3.17 (6 reviews)
Author: Homer
ISBN: 9789629546595

Author: Homer

Narrator: Anton Lesser

Abridged: 4 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Naxos

Published: 10/29/2007

Categories: Fiction, Poetry, Epic Poetry

Synopsis

The Trojan War is over and Odysseus, the cunning King of Ithaca, sets out for home, his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus. It proves a long, ten-year journey, fraught with dangers, from Polyphemus, the one-eyed Cyclops, and the seductive Sirens, to the love of Calypso on her all-too-comfortable isle. When he arrives in Ithaca, he has to contend with a group of suitors who have been pressing his wife to forget about her husband, admit she is a widow, and marry one of them. Anton Lesser, one of Britain’s finest audiobook stars, brings this great classic to life in the new and imaginative translation by Ian Johnston.

About Homer

Homer is a legendary ancient Greek poet, traditionally said to be the author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey. The ancient Greeks generally believed that Homer was a historical individual, but modern scholars are skeptical: no reliable biographical information has been handed down from classical antiquity, and the poems themselves manifestly represent the culmination of many centuries of oral storytelling and a well-developed "formulaic" system of poetic composition. It has been suggested that "Homer" is "not the name of a historical poet, but a fictitious or constructed name."

Reviews

Goodreads review by s.penkevich on January 19, 2025

When you stop and think about it, much of classic literature is about how getting on a boat is a bad idea. This book is a litany on why boating is a bad idea. You can say it at least worked out for Odysseus but did it? Did it really? If that dude isn’t haunted by the screams of his crew forever it’s......more

Goodreads review by Sasha on February 27, 2015

"Okay, so here's what happened. I went out after work with the guys, we went to a perfectly nice bar, this chick was hitting on me but I totally brushed her off. Anyway we ended up getting pretty wrecked, and we might have smoked something in the bathroom, I'm not totally clear on that part, and the......more

Goodreads review by Charlotte on January 13, 2019

Quite possibly one of my favourite books! It was this novel that ignited my love for Greek and Roman mythology and antiquity - leading me to choose a degree in Classical Civilisations. I always look back on The Odyssey with fondness - I love all the monsters he faces and the gods who involve themselve......more

Goodreads review by Leonard on January 30, 2023

I first read Homer in the 19th-century French translation by Leconte de Lisle — the equivalent, say, of the 18th-century translation into English by Alexander Pope: a pompous, archaic and exhausting bore of a book. I kept my chin up and, after a while, tried another inflated Frenchman: the 1955 tran......more

Goodreads review by Bella on May 05, 2025

long distance couple goals......more