Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey: A Biography

A worldwide exploration of the history, purpose, and inescapable influence of the Iliad and the Odyssey that will inspire readers to think anew about Homer’s work

No one knows whether Homer was a real person, but there is no doubt that the epic poems assembled under his name are foundations of Western literature. The Iliad and the Odyssey—with their tales of the Trojan War, Achilles, Odysseus and Penelope, the Cyclops, the beautiful Helen of Troy, and the petulant gods—have inspired us for over two and a half millennia and influenced writers from Plato to Virgil, Pope to Joyce, and Dante to Margaret Atwood.

In this graceful and sweeping book, Alberto Manguel traces the lineage of Homer’s poems. He examines their original purpose, either as allegory or record of history; surveys the challenges the pagan poems presented to the early Christian world; and looks at their reception after the Reformation through the present day. In this revised and expanded edition, Manguel ignites new ways of thinking about these classic works.

Dazzling. . . . Manguel, who has read everything, will tell you where to find traces of the original—the Helen, the Cyclops, the Circe, the horse—in Icelandic sagas, fourteenth century danse macabre, Fellini’s 8 1/2, Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, and Jack and the Beanstalk. He devotes chapters to Homer as poetry, history, symbol, everyman, in translation and in Islam. And he himself writes like a dream of antiquity. — John Leonard, Harper’s Magazine