Emily Wilson is retranslating ‘The Odyssey’, nearly 10 years after translating it for the first time

Emily Wilson, the first woman to translate Homer’s epic The Odyssey into English, has told The Associated Press in an interview that she is retranslating it. It’ll not be a revision of her 2017 translation. She also added that the new edition will be longer and will “better reflect the differing social worlds of Homer’s poem.”

Wilson’s 2017 translation has sold more than a million copies. Peter Simon, her editor at WW Norton, told The New York Times that the book saw an uptick in sales after Christopher Nolan announced his movie. Nolan had cited her translation and its opening sentence, “Tell me about a complicated man,” as inspiration for his film. Wilson has, however, criticised Nolan for his adaptation of the epic and accused it of lacking “psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth.” She also said that the movie’s narrative structure was “gimmicky”, and the writing “abysmal.”

The new translation will also be published by WW Norton. Wilson said that she’s already halfway through and is a few years from completion....

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