Iliad

Homer, E V Rieu, Peter Jones, D C H Rieu, Coralie Bickford-Smith

Book cover for Iliad
Book cover for Iliad
Book cover for Iliad
Book cover for Iliad

Iliad

Iliad

Homer, E V Rieu, Peter Jones, D C H Rieu, Coralie Bickford-Smith

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Description

'The best modern prose translation of The Iliad' Robin Lane Fox, The Times

The first of the world's great tragedies, The Iliad centres on the pivotal four days towards the end of the ten-year war between the Greeks and the Trojans. In a series of dramatic set pieces, it follows the story of the humiliation of Achilleus at the hands of Agamemnon and his slaying of Hektor: a barbarous act with repercussions that ultimately determine the fate of Troy. The Iliad not only paints an intimate picture of individual experience, but also offers a universal perspective in which human loss and suffering are set against a vast and unpitying divine background where fickle, quarrelsome gods decide the fate of men.

Translated with an Introduction by Martin Hammond

About the Author

Seven Greek cities claim the honor of being the birthplace of Homer (c. 8th-7th century BC), the poet to whom the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey are attributed. The Iliad is the oldest surviving work of Western literature, but the identity--or even the existence--of Homer himself is a complete mystery, with no reliable biographical information having survived.

E. V. Rieu initiated Penguin Classics with Allen Lane, and his famous translation of the Odyssey was the first book published in the series in 1947. The Iliad followed in 1950.

Coralie Bickford-Smith is an award-winning designer at Penguin Books, where she has created several highly acclaimed series designs. She studied typography at Reading University and lives in London.

Critical Reviews

"Fitzgerald has solved virtually every problem that has plagued translators of Homer. The narrative runs, the dialogue speaks, the military action is clear, and the repetitive epithets become useful text rather than exotic relics." -Atlantic Monthly

"Fitzgerald's swift rhythms, bright images, and superb English make Homer live as never before...This is for every reader in our time and possibly for all time."-Library Journal

"[Fitzgerald's Odyssey and Iliad] open up once more the unique greatness of Homer's art at the level above the formula; yet at the same time they do not neglect the brilliant texture of Homeric verse at the level of the line and the phrase." -The Yale Review

"What an age can read in Homer, what its translators can manage to say in his presence, is one gauge of its morale, one index to its system of exultations and reticences. The supple, the iridescent, the ironic, these modes are among our strengths, and among Mr. Fitzgerald's." -National Review

With an Introduction by Gregory Nagy

Publishing Information

Publisher: Penguin Group
Pub date: 2015-11-24
Length: 560 pages

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