The Odyssey of Homer

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Good source material, brutal violence - Rated
This is the translation of The Odyssey by T.E. Lawrence. The narrative is, of course, very dense, as you would expect from transposing epic poetry into prose, and I rather felt that I should read it again some time over a period of weeks, taking one of the 24 chapters each day in several translations. The central narrative has more of Odysseus' son Telemachus than I had realised - he goes off on an initial quest for his father and then is instrumental in engineering his return to Ithaca. I was also startled by the brutal violence with which Odysseus and Telemachus dispose of Penelope's suitors and the maidservants. Most of the stories I already knew from other reading, but it was interesting to get a sense of the original.