After the horror of war, the difficulty of return – angry seas, lost comrades, plotters at home. Daniel Mendelsohn teaches at Bard College and writes for The New York Review of Books. His compelling new translation of the Odyssey acknowledges the themes of this story have been repeated over millennia: separation, trials, and reunion.

The Odyssey is a complete world, and an invitation for others to participate. Virgil and Dante, James Joyce and Constantine P. Cavafy all reworked episodes from the story of Odysseus. Contemporary novelists, from Margaret Atwood to Madeline Miller, present rich perspectives on the women who inhabit the tale, from Penelope to Helen and Circe. The first published female translator of the Homeric epic, Emily Wilson, has written movingly about silences in the text, particularly from the ubiquitous ‘serving women’ who make life possible for the principal characters, the élite of the Mycenaean age.