Audio book read by Audra McDonald available on Audible
*Winner of the 2024 Audie Award for Best Literary Fiction and Classics*
Best Books Lists, 2023: The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, The Telegraph, The New Statesman, The Guardian
(available at Bookshop.org, your local independent bookstore, and Amazon)
The Iliad
The Iliad (2023)
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.
Reviews and Observations:
London Review of Books “Good Jar, Bad Jar” (November 2, 2023) by Ange Mlinko
“Wilson’s Iliad is clear and brisk, its iambic pentameter a zone of enchantment.”
The Guardian “The Iliad by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson review – a bravura feat” (September 27, 2023) by Edith Hall
“Wilson’s command of ancient Greek vocabulary, dialects and metres lends authority to every aesthetic decision she’s made”
The Bulwark “Preserving Homer’s Magic” (September 26, 2023) by Daniel Walden
“The Homeric characters speak across time and language and seem more real, more elemental than we are, their words raised above mere dialogue by the alternating beats. Simply for reminding us of this indescribable but undeniable poetic power, Wilson deserves the praise of everyone who professes to love literature.”
Slate “She Reeled Us In With The Odyssey. Now: The Hard Stuff.” (September 26, 2023) by Johanna Hanink
“Wilson’s Iliad is crafted in language that is accessible without being modish, and elegant in its brightness and clarity.”
The New York Times “Warriors Who Seek Immortal Fame and Find It, in Epic Poetry” (September 23, 2023) by Hatalie Haynes
“propulsive” … “Wilson’s translation of Homeric Greek is always buoyant and expressive. “
The Times “The Iliad by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson review — slaughter, grief and female bondage” (September 23, 2023) by Peter Jones
“Wilson can take much pride in her successful contributions to [the] mighty stream [of Homer] and in making us think again about our cultural debts and educational responsibilities.”
The Washington Post (September 21, 2023) “The new ‘Iliad’ translation is a genuine page-turner” by Naoíse Mac Sweeney
“No other translation communicates the oral nature of the poem so brilliantly.”
The Spectator (September 21, 2023) “The bloody prequel: a triumphant new translation of the Iliad” by A. E. Stallings
“The effect [of Wilson’s translation] is not so much to bring the characters of the Iliad into the contemporary sphere, as to bring us into theirs. … A poem you read with your heart in your throat.”
The Yale Review (September 18, 2023) “How Emily Wilson Reimagined Homer” by Emily Greenwood
“What binds together Wilson’s different acts of translatorial flair into a meaningful whole is her feeling comprehension—as both scholar and reader—of the Iliad as a poem of life and death, a quality that courses through every line of her translation.”
The New Statesman (September 6, 2023) “Homer’s history of violence” by Rowan Williams
“wonderfully readable" … “beautiful, fluent, memorable"
Kirkus Review (August 1, 2023) “The Iliad”
“A masterful, highly readable rendering of the Greek classic.”
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