The Iliad

This is an excellent translation, very faithful to Homer’s original text and in fluent style. Caroline Alexander is thoroughly in touch with modern scholarship; her introduction is extensive and illuminating, and there are copious notes anticipating the most likely difficulties in interpretation. As a retired Classics teacher I would recommend it unreservedly.

This is an excellent translation: the language is strong and forthright, and maintains a fine momentum, carrying the reader along. My benchmark for Homer is the Fagles translation, but this runs it close. All in all, a gripping read, well worth five stars.

Purchased this book for my daughter's studies, and she found great enjoyment in reading it.

This story is a wearisome one. But I’m not saying that it’s dull or uninteresting; on the contrary, it’s remarkable. It’s wearisome because this ancient tale achieves what it sets out to do: it exposes the ridiculously futile, indiscriminate nature of violence. There’s no glorification or romantic connotation of war here. The blood-stained dust, the bowel-spilling lust and rage, amplified by ridiculous notions of human honour and incited by the fickle tempers of the Greek Pantheon’s perverse whims, all prove, to use the translator’s words, that ‘above all, war blights every life it touches.’ With regards to the translation, I’ve never read this in the original Greek and so I’m not going to pretend to know if it’s accurate or not. What I would say is that Caroline Alexander has done a phenomenal job of presenting this ancient story into modern English, and I found her introduction to the text to be insightful and illuminating. Overall, fantastic. —Tristan Sherwin, author of *Love: Expressed*

Good quality of book. Good translation.

This book was definitely not what I was expecting. I was expecting a glorification of war in an epic poem, however, this book is very much not a glorification of war but rather shows it to be pointless and cause immense amounts of suffering for both sides, with neither side being seen as more worthy. The events of the book are told in prophesy before they happen but that doesn't make how the events unfurl any less interesting. The verse makes the story flow, although occasionally there are some bizarre sentences. There's definitely a reason this story has lasted this long, it truly is an epic poem.

I was new to the classics and this translation was very readable. I highly recommend it.

Read the description wrong, thought it would be the latin with an english translation - but i didn't mind purely because the book cover illustration is so gorgeous

One of the most ancient stories in the world, The Iliad as recounted by Homer is an epic in the truest sense of the word. It is a story that has been told, and retold, for thousands of years. Dozens, possibly hundreds, have tried their hand and tested their skill at translating the poem from its original Greek over the years. I was a teenager when I first read Fagle's classic translation, often considered the modern standard for the tale. It is hard not to get swept away by the grandeur and the scale of it, the tragedy of men and gods. "Wrath--sing, goddess, of the ruinous wrath of Peleus' son Achilles..." So begins the poem as translated and retold by Caroline Alexander. Here, after millennia, Alexander is not choosing to reinvent the wheel but refine it, and she does so remarkably. She seems to have found a way to streamline the rhythm of the poem, shaping and refining its cadence. Modern readers are wont to remember The Iliad was originally intended to be an oral story, spoken aloud, and I implore readers to try it as they make their way through. It's truly remarkable, the way it almost seems to flow and carry itself forward. Inflection and emotion come alive in that way and, for a moment, one could easily find themselves swept away by the tale of gods and heroes. It's a wondrous experience for those who might be experiencing The Iliad for the first time, as well as those--like myself--who have read it a few times, by a few different translators. In sum, Caroline Alexander has done a remarkable thing and made the ancient new. The Iliad is, and always has been, a living story but in this new edition it feels reinvigorated and exciting and fresh. I absolutely cannot recommend it enough.

I'd been put off reading the iliad for years on account of an unnecessarily conflated translation that had been hanging around the fmaily library. You'll have no such problems with Alexander's translation, her work is acessible while retaining the epic feel of the poem. Her introduction and further reading suggestions are also incredibly informative for those looking to dig deeper into the content.

Llegó roto y doblado

It's a classic we all know about but the translation is easy to read.

Great book. My daughter needed it for University at a fraction of the cost.