A voyage of discovery: an idiot’s guide to reading The Odyssey

Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation of the ancient Greek epic has sparked a new appetite for an old classic. Here are the translations, podcasts and audiobooks that make the Homeric world more approachable The Odyssey was once all Greek to me. I struggled to keep up with the characters, the mass of heroes and villains, the swarms of sons and daughters. I found the Homeric formula – repeated stock phrases passed down from the oral tradition – confusing and tiring. The prose in my 1946 EV Rieu ...

By Ioan Marc Jones