Lucas Stoffel

The Odyssey (Emily Wilson Translation) Book Review: Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey is the first into English by a woman, and the moment you start reading — or listening — you understand why that matters. Not because of gender politics, though those are relevant, but because Wilson makes choices that centuries of male translators never thought to make, and those choices crack the poem open.

I need to be honest with you: when my book club picked this, I wanted to run. Classic literature. John Steinbeck. I'm a sci-fi and YA reader. I live in the NYT bestseller list, not the Western canon. But the whole point of book club is to try things you wouldn't pick up on your own, so I took it up. And East of Eden completely blindsided me.