It used to seem like the first four books are just waiting until we get to the main narrative. I was never all that interested in the Telemachus story when I was younger. How do you read it differently as a mother? I feel like I read it differently now that I’m a parent compared to when I read it, having parents but not actually being one. So many things resonate in so many different ways-and have resonated differently at different points in my life. I love the way that it’s about identity, about change, about class difference, about foreignness, about strangeness. There are so many perspectives in the story beyond the central character. Where is it that Odysseus is fully at home? Does that depend on who he is? The answer to that question seems to be constantly changing, so how can there be such a thing as a stable home?Īs I’ve gone on rereading the poem over the last three decades, I’ve realized more clearly that it’s not just Odysseus’s story. I was always excited by the way it’s a story about being lost and being at home, and whether you can tell the difference between them.

Then in high school, I started reading it little bits of it in Greek, and later read the whole poem in college. I was first exposed to the story at the age of eight, when I was in a school play version of the Odyssey in Oxford. How did you first come to love Homer and the poem? But first, let’s discuss your translation. You’ve picked the best books to read after (or alongside) The Odyssey.

Foreign Policy & International Relations.

The book the odyssey