I wish that the astonishing and powerful Seamus Heaney translation of ?Beowulf ?had been available when Roger Avary and I first wrote our film script. Heaney's reading of his own Beowulf has been on my iPod for the last two years, and I play it when my blood needs stirring. This illustrated edition is possibly the finest version of Heaney's translation yet, and is the next best thing to being in the mead hall at Heorat, watching the action, with Heaney chanting it beside you. --Neil Gaiman

The carefully selected pictures that accompany Heaney's masterful translation illustrate the heroic Scandinavian world evoked in ?Beowulf?.... They visualize its helmets, swords, warships, but also the jewelry and musical instruments, and the majestic landscape. --Hans Sauer, University at Munich, and former president, International Society of Anglo-Saxonists

Accomplish[es] what before now had seemed impossible: a faithful rendering that is simultaneously an original and gripping poem in its own right. "

The carefully selected pictures that accompany Heaney's masterful translation illustrate the heroic Scandinavian world evoked in ?Beowulf?.... They visualize its helmets, swords, warships, but also the jewelry and musical instruments, and the majestic landscape. --Hans Sauer, University at Munich, and former president, International Society of Anglo-Saxonists"

Accomplish[es] what before now had seemed impossible: a faithful rendering that is simultaneously an original and gripping poem in its own right.

I wish that the astonishing and powerful Seamus Heaney translation of ?Beowulf ?had been available when Roger Avary and I first wrote our film script. Heaney's reading of his own Beowulf has been on my iPod for the last two years, and I play it when my blood needs stirring. This illustrated edition is possibly the finest version of Heaney's translation yet, and is the next best thing to being in the mead hall at Heorat, watching the action, with Heaney chanting it beside you. --Neil Gaiman"