Friday essay: I’ve been reading The Odyssey my whole life. Nolan’s film version is exhilarating – but not perfect

By Anthony Macris, Professor of Creative Writing, University of Technology Sydney

I first read The Odyssey during the summer holidays when I was 15 years old. Parked under the shade of the mulberry tree in our Brisbane backyard, I would read, grab a few mulberries, then read some more, my fingers sometimes staining the pages dark purple. It was a secondhand Penguin Classics edition, translated by E.V. Rieu, its yellowing paper and creased spine, to my teenage eyes, somehow as ancient as the work itself.

Every time I read the Homeric epithet “wine-dark sea” – one of the repeated formulas that bear…

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