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The Odyssey Paperback – November 5, 1998

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Homer (Author)
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Homer (Author), Robert Fitzgerald (Translator), D. S. Carne-Ross (Introduction)
4.4 out of 5 stars 1,145 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 515 pages
  • Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (November 5, 1998)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0374525749
  • ISBN-13: 978-0374525743
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1 x 8.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1,145 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,153 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Top Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 starsNot the best adaptation for the Kindle
By T. Simons VINE VOICE on October 31, 2009
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
This is Alexander Pope's verse translation of the Odyssey, first published in 1726, glommed into a kindle edition. It is not formatted for the Kindle and is thus very difficult to read -- instead of stanzas, it's all oddly-broken chunks that vaguely resemble paragraphs, presumably an artifact of whatever software was used to scan the original text. To add to that, it's poetry *by Alexander Pope*, and thus largely in heroic couplets, deliberately archaic even to the ear of Pope's 18th-century contemporaries, with "thou"s scattered throughout -- there's a reason that William Wordsworth thought Pope's poetry archaic and artificial.

As this is a "kindle bestseller" but there aren't any other listed reviews, I suspect a lot of people are (like myself) downloading this for their kindles because it shows up readily in a search for "Odyssey", and then getting stymied by the five-hundred-"location" introductory essay (written, as best I can tell, in the early 1800's, and thus hopelessly outdated by little things like two hundred year's worth of Homerian scholarship, Schliemann's discovery of Troy, etc.) and the near-impenetrable arrangement of the text. If anyone can find a better-formatted free-download kindle version of the Odyssey (perhaps a prose translation?) please link me to it in a comment. Thanks.
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5.0 out of 5 starsA nearly perfect conjunction of elements
By Robert Moore HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on September 8, 2001
Format: Paperback
Fagle's translation of THE ODYSSEY in the Penguin edition is an almost perfect act of publishing. The translation itself manages to be enormously readable, highly poetic, and extremely accurate, all at the same time. The Introduction by Bernard Knox should serve as a model for all scholars who are called upon to write critical introductions for classic works of literature. And the book design is is extraordinary; this edition of Homer's classic is easily one of the most attractive paperback books in my library. I had read this once before in translation (in the old Rieu version), and then later translated much of it in a second year Greek class. But in neither instance did I enjoy it as much as reading the Fagles's translation.
Aristotle did not think that people should study philosophy too early in life, and perhaps that is also true of reading Homer. Part of me feels that we make a mistake in our education systems by making students read THE ODYSSEY before they are in a position to appreciate it. If one looks through the reviews here, a very large number of very negative reviews by a lot of high school students can be found. I find this unfortunate. In part I regret that we are forcing younger readers to read this book before they have fully matured as readers. Perhaps the book and the students themselves would be better served if we allowed them time to grow a bit more as readers before asking them to tackle Homer.
THE ODYSSEY is so enormously enjoyable (at least for this adult reader) that it is easy to forget just how very old it is. What impresses me is how readable it is, despite its age. There are very, very few widely read works older than THE ILIAD and THE ODYSSEY. And the gap between how entertaining these works are and those that come before them is gigantic.Read more ›
5 Comments 281 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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5.0 out of 5 starsEpic achievement
By A Customer on October 7, 1997
Format: Hardcover
Since you ask me, you word-hungry Amazonians,
How I came solate in life to the end of a tale
That schoolchildren read in comicbooks,
A tale that is one of the sturdy legs
Of the table on which our culture rests
Since you ask, I will tell you, and gladly, too.
My journey started, though you grin in disbelief,
In ninth-grade Latin class, where "Ulysses"
Duped the cyclops by calling himself "Nemo."
Then a deep sleep fell over me,
And I knew no more Homer, not in Greek or Latin
Or English or even the strange tongue
Of the network miniseries, while Sun
Drove his blazing chariot round Earth
One hundred hundred times.
In this sleep I wandered the world of letters,
Homerless but unable to avoid the homeric:
Achilles' heel, the Sirens' song,
Calypso, the Trojan Horse, and swinemaking Circe--
Crouched like Scylla, aswirl like Charybdis,
Threatening cultural death to epic ignorance.
At last I found my literary Tiresias,
The New York Times Book Review.
I shook from this seer the name Fagles,
And so guided, I made my way home at last,
Through a translation that rings of a heroic time,
A time when men were stronger and grander than we,
When women were more beautiful,
And when, granted, sexual equality wanted
A few millennia's labor;
But even so, a rendering as modern
As anything DeLillo, new god of the underworld,
Or the infinitely jesting Wallace
Can lay before us.
The best, in fine, of both worlds, an epic worthy
Of the blind bard and of his heroes, his heroines,
And the deathless denizens of Olympus.
20 Comments 359 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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5.0 out of 5 stars5 stars for being unique and comfortable in its own skin.
By ingrid888 on October 29, 2000
Format: Paperback
Most everybody knows about the Odyssey of Homer (the story and all that), so this review is about this particular translation by Stanley Lombardo. You have the classic English verse translations (Chapman, Pope, Cowper) and the classic prose translations (Butcher and Lang, Palmer), then you have the twentieth century crowd (Lattimore, Fitzgerald, Mandelbaum, Fagles, Rieu, Rouse, Shewring etc...) Some of these are verse and some prose, some literal and some poetic. Some are easy to read and some more difficult. Lombardo's translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey are somewhat unusual in that they are both verse and very clear and easy to read. Very much modern-day speech. Not that Fagles or Fitzgerald or Mandelbaum, for instance, (all verse translations) are difficult to read, but Lombardo's verse translation is really in a different category. His translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey sort of stand alone in their simple style and may be worth reading for that reason alone. I think also there is an unselfconsciousness in Lombardo's effort - and attitude - as well as a "very well then hang me, devils" confidence that comes through. Fresh, quick, engaging, spare, alive (typical words used by professional/academic reviewers for this translation...) An interesting touch by Lombardo is whenever Homer goes into one of his celebrated similes or metaphors Lombardo puts them into italics and sets them apart in the text. There are more of these in the Iliad than the Odyssey, but it is interesting to read them separate this way. He uses very much 'man on the street' expressions, and his verse reads very quickly, or, 'lightly' like a clear stream flowing easily over stones. I don't want to give the impression these are simplified versions of Homer's epics.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

A lovely interpretation of an old classic

Published 4 days ago by Caddaren
4.0 out of 5 starsGood translation

Very readable, and the thing actually flows despite the gulf of time

Published 8 days ago by Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsWonderful translation makes for easy reading and understanding

Classic. Wonderful translation makes for easy reading and understanding.

Published 11 days ago by A. D. Lopes
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Very good.

Published 12 days ago by Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

This is one of the most accurate and flowing translations of the Greek epic there is

Published 12 days ago by Dafne
5.0 out of 5 starsWell, I bought this book for my niece. ...

Well, I bought this book for my niece. No clue what it is about but I still took a gander at the questions.

Published 16 days ago by Shelly Moretti
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

One of the greatest books of all time

Published 18 days ago by Twes
4.0 out of 5 starsit is a beautiful book with the illustrations and font choice

it is a beautiful book with the illustrations and font choice. my only complaint is that I thought I was buying an adult version of the book. Read more

Published 23 days ago by gordon
1.0 out of 5 starsOne Star

Nothing wrong with the book, just ordered the wrong edition for high school reading!

Published 24 days ago by Amazon Customer
1.0 out of 5 starsThere's another Kindle Book collection very similar to this one ...

There's another Kindle Book collection very similar to this one and it shares the same "flaw." Both are advertised as having Robert Fagles' translations of the Homer... Read more

Published 26 days ago by dennis benjamin

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