The Iliad by Homer (Emily Wilson Translation)

When Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey appeared in 2017, revealing the ancient poem in a contemporary idiom praised as fresh and unpretentious, critics hailed it as a revelation and a cultural landmark that would forever change how Homer is read in English. Now Wilson has returned with an equally revelatory translation of Homer's other great epic, the most revered war poem of all time.

The Iliad roars with the clamor of arms, the bellowing boasts of victors, the fury and grief of loss and the anguished cries of dying men. It sings, too, of the sublime magnitude of the world, the fierce beauty of nature and the gods' grand schemes beyond the ken of mortals. In Wilson's hands, this thrilling, magical and often horrifying tale now gallops at a pace befitting its legendary battle scenes, in crisp but resonant language that evokes the poem's deep pathos and reveals palpably real, even complicated, characters, both human and divine.

The culmination of a decade of intense engagement with antiquity's most surpassingly beautiful and emotionally complex poetry, Wilson's Iliad gives us a complete Homer for our generation.

This book is featured on The Book Club with Michael Knowles, PragerU's show dedicated to the great books of Western civilization. In this episode, Michael Knowles is joined by Ivy League classicist Joshua Katz to discuss why a 2,800-year-old poem about war, love, fate and free will still embodies the human condition today.

📺 Watch the episode: Joshua Katz — The Iliad by Homer

Own Emily Wilson's acclaimed new translation of The Iliad and discover why Homer's ancient epic of war and fate still speaks directly to modern readers.