The Odyssey

Homer’s Odyssey tells of Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, and the ten years it takes him to get home after the Trojan War. Gods help him and hinder him. A nymph holds him on an island. A witch turns his men to swine. He blinds a Cyclops and earns the sea-god’s hate. At home, his wife Penelope keeps a house full of suitors who eat his wealth and wait to replace him. His son Telemachus goes looking for news of a father he barely knows. Homer moves between the voyage and the household, between cunning and endurance. Disguise, tests of loyalty, and a final reckoning in his own hall decide who still belongs to him. The Odyssey is an epic about getting back, and about whether the man who returns is the man his people remember.