Odyssey, The (Signet Classics)

THE GREATEST ADVENTURE OF ALL TIME—NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

Whether fans of suspense, fantasy, or human drama, readers of all ages thrill to Homer’s epic tale of the legendary Odysseus on his decade-long journey, as he meets the lotus-eaters, cunningly flees Cyclops, angers his gods, resists the sexy Sirens, narrowly escapes Scylla and Charybdis, averts his eyes from Medusa, docks in distant cities—all the while struggling to make it home to his wife and son.

Adventure on the high seas, legendary romance, tests of endurance, betrayal, heroism—the saga of The Odyssey has all these and more, imagined by the most famous bard of all time.

Homer was probably born around 725BC on the Coast of Asia Minor, now the coast of Turkey, but then really a part of Greece. Homer was the first Greek writer whose work survives. He was one of a long line of bards, or poets, who worked in the oral tradition. Homer and other bards of the time could recite, or chant, long epic poems. Both works attributed to Homer—the Iliad and the Odyssey —are over ten thousand lines long in the original. Homer must have had an amazing memory but was helped by the formulaic poetry style of the time.