The Odyssey: Translation, Introduction, and Notes by Barry B. Powell - Softcover

Magnetically readable. (Booklist, starred review)

[A] clear and energetic translation.... Staying true to Homer's poetic rhythms, Powell avoids the modified iambic lines found in Lattimore's, Fagles's, and Mitchell's works. He also avoids Lombardo's tendency to cast Homer in contemporary language and Fitzgerald's anachronisms. This fine version of The Iliad has a feel for the Greek. (Library Journal)

With swift, transparent language that rings both ancient and modern, Barry Powell gives readers anew all of the rage, pleasure, pathos, and humor that are Homer's Iliad - a reading experience richly illumined by the insightful commentary and plentiful images accompanying the text. (Jane Alison, author of The Love-Artist)

This translation is the complete package. A lucid and accessible introduction gives a general audience what they need to appreciate the nature of this extraordinary poem, and the translation itself is admirably energetic, readable, and direct. Powell's style is individual and self-assured, and his lines cry out to be read aloud. Just as in the original, the pace never lets up and the events of that long-lost past flash by. It is a remarkable achievement, one that fully deserves to rank with any of the current contenders. (Denis Feeney, Princeton University)

Barry Powell's clever translation is simple and energetic: sometimes coarse, sometimes flowing, it is always poetically engaged. He lays bare the semantic background of Homer through felicitous phrasing and delivers us a Dark-Age epic, one more suggestive of Norse sagas than the cultural milieu of archaic Ionia. Fresh and eminently readable, Powell's Iliad is likely to stay. (Margalit Finkelberg, editor of The Homer Encyclopedia)

Barry Powell, the master of classical mythology, has done it again - a powerful translation of the poem that started European literature. His muscular verses are faithful to the original Greek but bring the characters to life. This is a page-turner, bound to become the new standard. (Ian Morris, author of Why the West Rules - For Now)

The Odyssey is one of the world's greatest and best-loved poems. It has survived for twenty-eight centuries, through upheavals that have wiped out most of what was written in the ancient world. Now Barry B. Powell, one of the twenty-first century's leading Homeric scholars, has given us a powerful new translation.

Powell's translation renders the Homeric Greek with a simplicity and dignity reminiscent of the original. The text immediately engrosses students with its tight and balanced rhythms, while the incantatory repetitions evoke a continuous "stream of sound" that offers as good an impression of Homer's Greek as one could hope to attain without learning the language. Accessible, poetic, and accurate, this translation is an excellent fit for today's students. Powell exposes them to all of the adventure, cunning, pathos, and humor that are Homer's Odyssey.