Posted on 08/21/2026 6:21:44 PM PDT by Cronos
Nolan’s Odyssey is a massive boon to those who care about literature and the written word.
Book versions of Homer’s epic poem have been selling like hotcakes in the wake of the film’s release. Just days after the film premiered, translations of the story had reached Nos. 4, 8, and 49 on Amazon’s bestsellers list, with a translation of the Iliad at No. 61.
Nolan’s film “boosted sales” of the book enough to net a sales increase of 76% “across all editions,” including both text and audio versions of the tale, as Spotify revealed that listens to the audiobook on the streaming platform “jumped more than 240%” weeks before the premiere and were “up roughly 680%” after the blockbuster’s release. The BBC reported that in the U.K., print sales of the classic epic had risen “by 700%” in the week following the film’s release when compared to the same period in 2025; meanwhile, the audiobook narrations of the poem by Sirs Stephen Fry and Ian McKellen had entered both the Spotify U.K. and U.S. Top 10 lists, respectively. Even now, after the Odyssey hype has settled down a touch, Emily Wilson’s translation sits at No. 14, and Robert Fagles’ at No. 19, on Amazon’s bestsellers list; Wilson’s translation has also captured the No. 2 spot on USA Today’s bestseller list. And let’s not forget the libraries: The New York Public Library and Brooklyn Public Library both confirmed to me that there has been a spike in demand for the Odyssey, with the NYPL citing a “338 percent increase” last month. Madison Stoneburner, a marketing specialist for OverDrive (the company behind the digital library app Libby), told me that following The Odyssey’s release, “ebooks and audiobooks on Libby saw a 1,005.93% increase in checkouts compared to the same period in 2025.”
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
I am smiling thinking of how many youngsters who always “watch the movie instead of reading the book”, will now learn that reading the book is usually a far better exercise.
The Odyssey doesn’t have the Nephilim.
The drachma originated in the 6th century BC, at least 200 years after the iliad and Odyssey were out in their finished form
True, it did start off like the hobbit battle of 5 armies. It got better about 40 minutes in
Emily Wilson is the most straightforward — she uses iambic pentameter.
Rouse’s translation is old, and does not attempt to follow the meter of Ancient Greek, but translates the poems or rather he rewrote the poems.
After I learnt other languages well enough to translate I understood just how much an art it is yo translate. You can’t take it word for word as it makes no sense, but then keeping the meaning and even more so keeping it in poetic meter, now that is high art and requires high intelligence and artistic ability that I cannot even fathom, leave alone attempt to attain
I didn’t learn Greek in college. I got multilingual with french, then german, italian, farsi and Polish. But Greek and Gaelic flummoxed me as I could hear similarities between the other Indo-European tongues but not Greek nor Gaelic
Thank you for that correction!
Ya beat me to it!!!!
Good job.
As for me... I turned the movie off in one minute when I saw that a cute little boy who used to be a cute little girl was playing a Greek Warrior. Maybe I didn’t give the movie a fair chance but seems to me that the opening scene of an epic movie shouldn’t be so ridiculously ‘woke’.
Go woke, go broke. The movie got smashed at the box office by Spider-Man.
Hopefully Alexander Pope’s translation.
An art it is to translate...
If I had offered up what Emily Wilson had produced to any of my teachers or professors, I would have failed the assignment.
Epic tale. I recall my Greek mythology professor was very good. Thanks for the detailed discussion.
Read it in High School,
Read it as a young adult.
Read it in my middle ages.
Read it in my old age a few months ago.
Got all the movies made except this last one.
You would think I liked this story!
Favorite movie, Helen of troy (1956)
Trying to work my way through Dante’s THE DIVINE COMEDY. Totally incomprehensible even in modern English with notes telling “’Who’s’ on first, ‘What’s on second and ‘I Don’t Know’ is on third.”
Probably not encouraging more people to read. Probably encouraging readers to read that. Non-readers are not going to be jumping at that end of the pool.
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