The Foundational Epic
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The Odyssey is now reborn in a fresh translation by Michael Solot as the robust, living work of art that it is. The standard academic approach to the poem has made it seem hard; it isn’t. The Odyssey is easy, and if you’re not a scholar who already knows what to look for, it’s full of surprises and often very funny. The Odyssey’s ease, its surprises, and its humor are all brought to light in Solot’s translation and in his commentary.
Solot’s focus is on the story. So, to make it as easy to enjoy in English as it is in Greek he first rejected the line-for-line approach often found in academic translations. And then, to capture the distinctive flowof Homer’s poetry, he developed a supple five-beat line as consistently scannable as the original’s hexameters, but with a length and a galloping cadence ideally suited to the task of recreating the endlessly varying and propulsive rhythms of Homer’s verse in English.
Aedan Kennedy brings the Odyssey to life as never before with more than eighty pen-and-ink illustrations, each one placed precisely within the text to depict a particular moment in the story, a unique achievement in the history of Homeric translation.
There are two editions. One has an extensive commentary intended to make the epic as user-friendly as possible by offering readers a basic understanding of ancient Greek religion, geography, and culture, while also exploring a range of other topics like Homer as an oral poet, his art of characterization, the intricacies of his storytelling, and the unfailing naturalism of the Odyssey, which, for all its impossibilities, portrays the world as it is.
In place of the commentary, the other edition offers a short introduction summarizing the basics about Homer, the themes of his epic, its plotlines, its structure, and the cinematic nature of Homeric storytelling. There is also a well-developed survey of humor in the Odyssey, a much-neglected topic.
James Sale, author of the epic poem The English Cantos
"What distinguishes this Odyssey is not only Solot's verse but the entire interpretative framework surrounding it. His two hundred pages of commentary revive the poem as a living meditation on language, myth, and memory, challenging a century of inherited academic assumptions. Instead of treating Homer as a philological relic, Solot reads him as a dynamic artist, bringing insight, humour, and contemporary moral clarity to the text. Alongside this, Aedan Kennedy's illustrations offer a second major contribution. They are not embellishments but visual interpretations, echoing the energy and seriousness of the poem through an archaic yet expressive style reminiscent of black-figure pottery. Text, image, and commentary interact as a single, unified creation .... [T]his is a must-have book for anyone who is serious about reading Homer. It is the best single volume you can purchase on The Odyssey."
Joseph Salemi, Lecturer in the Department of Classical Languages, Hunter College, C.U.N.Y.
“The very best commentary on the text that I have ever seen. This lengthy commentary is clear, direct, unpretentious, and yet at the same time as solid in its scholarship as one could wish. There isn't a single important issue about the Odyssey and its meaning that Solot fails to address, or any disputed question that he doesn't deal with fairly and intelligently.”
Brian Yapko, award-winning poet
“Solot’s work focuses on the human aspects of the characters, giving his Odyssey an emotional heft that is missing from other versions. This affords the piece an almost cinematic quality—an aspect greatly enhanced by Aedan Kennedy’s splendid illustrations, which go far beyond the usual stiff representation of an overexposed scene here and there. Rather, they reinforce the words and give them heart. The marriage of art and language in this translation is a joy for the reader to experience.”
Michael Pietrack, bestselling author of Legacy and Boone
“Even if you’ve never touched the classics, this Odyssey welcomes you in. Solot’s metrical translation brings Homer’s rhythms to life so vividly that I could almost hear the lines being sung.”