Beowulf: Library Edition

In his new verse translation of Beowulf, Irish poet Seamus Heaney has created a modern masterwork from one of Europe's most ancient texts. Written between the 7th and 10th centuries, Beowulf was not meant to be read on the page, but to be heard. Heaney's majestic reading draws the listener into an exhilarating, deeply moving story of humankind's struggle with the monstrous. The result is an epic of absolute contemporary relevance, springing from mythic and poetic roots that reach into the bedrock of the English language itself. Seamus Heaney received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. A resident of Dublin since 1976, he is a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and teaches regularly at Harvard University.