a book

The Iliad

Name: The Iliad
Rating: 5 (14 reviews)
Author: Homer
ISBN: 9781324001805

Homer · 2023 · 761 pages

When Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey appeared in 2017--revealing the ancient poem in a contemporary idiom that was "fresh, unpretentious and lean" (Madeline Miller, Washington Post)--critics lauded it as "a revelation" (Susan Chira, New York Times) and "a cultural landmark" (Charlotte Higgins, Guardian) that would forever change how Homer is read in English. Now Wilson has returned with an equally revelatory translation of Homer's other great epic--the most revered war poem of all time.

The Iliad roars with the clamor of arms, the bellowing boasts of victors, the fury and grief of loss, and the anguished cries of dying men. It sings, too, of the sublime magnitude of the world--the fierce beauty of nature and the gods' grand schemes beyond the ken of mortals. In Wilson's hands, this thrilling, magical, and often horrifying tale now gallops at a pace befitting its legendary battle scenes, in crisp but resonant language that evokes the poem's deep pathos and reveals palpably real, even "complicated," characters--both human and divine.

The culmination of a decade of intense engagement with antiquity's most surpassingly beautiful and emotionally complex poetry, Wilson's Iliad now gives us a complete Homer for our generation.

recommended by 14 people

sourced from public statements

J. K. Rowling
“I was thinking of The Iliad when Harry saved Cedric’s body.”↗
Anthony Scaramucci
“"Read the Iliad and follow it up with the Odyssey. It’s all there. I wish I re-read it before I went into the White House. https://t.co/wrCbkBcckt"”↗
Gabor Mate
“It’s so ancient, and it’s so human, and it’s so eternal — that people way back, 3,200 years ago in mythical Greece and near Asia were struggling with issues of love, and honour, and fear of death, and dignity, and making decisions under tough circumstances, and it’s all in this beautiful poetic language. If I don’t read it for two or three years in a row, I start missing it, and I have to go back and read it in whatever translation.”↗
Nicholas Christakis
“@GabrielRossman And Hector is the only real (tragic) hero (and a real man) in the Illiad, a book I read once every other year, for solace and wisdom. 2/”↗
Elon Musk
Paul Graham
Stephen Fry
Stewart Brand
Christopher Pelling
Kate McLoughlin
John Gittings
Daniel Mendelsohn
Charlotte Higgins
Joe Gadway