The Odyssey is the oldest road trip story ever told, and still the greatest. After ten years of war, Odysseus faces ten more years of wandering before he can return to his island kingdom of Ithaca, his wife Penelope, and his son Telemachus. He battles cyclopes, outwits sorceresses, resists temptation, and confronts the dead. Each trial is both adventure and test: what kind of man will emerge from all this suffering? Homer's genius lies in making an epic feel intimate. Penelope weaves and unweaves her husband's shroud, delaying the suitors who pressure her to remarry. Telemachus, left fatherless, must grow from boy to man. The gods debate Odysseus' fate like judges in a celestial courtroom. This is a story about what it costs to come home, and whether the person who returns is the same one who left. It has monsters, music, sex, death, love, and the terrible beauty of ordinary life.
