The Odyssey

Homer’s The Odyssey, volume 1 in the Penguin Classics series, charts the Greek hero Odysseus’s perilous ten-year voyage home after the Trojan War. This ancient epic poem sweeps across storm-tossed seas and mythic realms, where cunning is pitted against shipwrecks, the Cyclops’s savagery, Circe’s enchantments, and the sea-god Poseidon’s relentless fury. Woven from threads of folklore, legend, and mythology, the narrative is a masterwork of early Western literature that explores endurance, identity, and the longing for home.

E. V. Rieu’s landmark translation, now revised by D. C. H. Rieu, inaugurated the Penguin Classics list and remains definitive. This edition of the foundational epic delivers the oral traditions of Ancient & Classical poetry to contemporary audiences, immersing readers in a world where mortal resolve clashes with divine caprice.