Considerations of gender aside, perhaps Wilson's greatest achievement is to disprove the increasingly held view that versions of ancient texts require an established poet to be parachuted in, like a literary James Bond, to rescue their English lines from the prosaic. It is immensely satisfying to see The Odyssey in the hands of such a careful and creative scholar who can pore over the semantic nuances of Homer's Greek as well as those of her own English. She scrapes away at old encrusted layers, until she exposes what lies beneath. Wilson translates as though translation is a moral choice - you owe fidelity not to the author, nor to the protagonist, but to the truth behind the words and the times. Wilson's Odyssey feels like a restoration of an old, familiar building that had over the years been encrusted with too much gilt. This is certainly an Odyssey for our moment. Emily Wilson proves an appropriately beguiling female translator. Charlotte Higgins, Poetry Book of the Day - The Guardian Armed with a sharp, scholarly rigour, she has produced a translation that exposes centuries of masculinist readings of the poem. Emily Wilson's crisp and musical version is a cultural landmark. The first version of Homer's groundbreaking work by a woman will change our understanding of it for ever.
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