About this Event
Distinguished author and classicist Daniel Mendelsohn launches his landmark new translation of Homer's most popular epic. In conversation with Fareed Zakaria, followed by a signing.
PLEASE NOTE: RSVPs are encouraged but not required. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served. Doors open at 5:30 pm.
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In 1961, the University of Chicago Press published Richmond Lattimore's translation of Homer's The Iliad. For more than sixty years, it has served to introduce readers to the ancient Greek world of gods and heroes and has been one of the most popular and respected versions of the work. Yet through all those decades, Chicago never published a companion translation of the best-known epic in the Western canon, The Odyssey--until now.
With his new Odyssey, celebrated author, critic, classicist, and translator Daniel Mendelsohn has created a rendering worthy of Chicago's unparalleled reputation in classical literature. Widely known for his essays bringing classical literature and culture to mainstream audiences in the New Yorker and many other publications, Mendelsohn eschews the streamlining and modernizing approach of many recent translations, focusing instead on the epic's formal qualities--meter, enjambment, alliteration, assonance--in order to bring it to life in all its archaic grandeur. In this line-for-line rendering, the long, six-beat line he uses, closer to the original than that of other recent translations, allows him to capture each Greek line without sacrificing the amplitude and shadings of the original.
The result is a magnificent feat of translation, one that conveys the poetics of the original while bringing to vivid life the gripping adventure, profound human insight, and powerful themes that make Homer's work continue to resonate today. Supported by an extensive introduction, notes, and commentary, Mendelsohn's Odyssey is poised to become the authoritative English-language version of this magnificent and enduringly influential masterpiece.
Memoirist, critic, translator, and frequent contributor of essays to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, where he is Editor-at-Large, Daniel Mendelsohn is the author of ten books, including the international bestsellers The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, winner of the National Jewish Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic, an NPR and Kirkus Best Book of the Year. His other honors include the Prix Médicis in France and the Premio Malaparte, Italy’s highest honor for foreign writers. In 2022 he was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Republic of France. He is currently the Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College.
Fareed Zakaria is the host of Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, a columnist for The Washington Post, and a bestselling author.
Fareed Zakaria GPS is a weekly international and domestic affairs program that airs around the world on CNN. Since its debut in 2008, it has featured interviews with Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Emmanuel Macron, Narendra Modi, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Condoleezza Rice, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Greta Thunberg, and the Dalai Lama, among others.
Zakaria has regularly hosted primetime specials for CNN. They include documentaries on U.S. history and foreign leaders, as well as profiles of extraordinary creators such as Billy Joel and Francis Ford Coppola.
He has been nominated for several Emmys for his television work and has won one. His weekly show has won the prestigious Peabody Award.
Fareed’s Global Briefing, a daily digital newsletter, is one of the most widely read of CNN's newsletters. His column for The Washington Post remains one of the longest-running for that newspaper.
Zakaria is the author of five highly-regarded New York Times bestselling books: Age of Revolutions (2024), an analysis of progress and backlash throughout history; The Post-American World (2008), a discussion of the rise of non-Western powers; The Future of Freedom (2003), a study of “illiberal democracy” in various countries; Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World (2020), on how the pandemic reshaped society; and In Defense of a Liberal Education (2015), a commentary on the importance of a well-rounded education.
Zakaria was named a “Top 10 Global Thinker of the Last 10 Years” by Foreign Policy magazine in 2019, and Esquire called him “the most influential foreign policy adviser of his generation.” He has received a National Magazine Award, the Arthur Ross Media Award from the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the Deadline Club Award. In 2010, the Government of India awarded him the Padma Bhushan, one of its highest civilian honors, and in 2022, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky awarded him the Order of Merit.
Prior to his tenure at CNN, Zakaria was editor of Newsweek International, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, a columnist for Time, an analyst for ABC News, and the host of Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria on PBS.
Zakaria earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale University, a doctorate in political science from Harvard University, and has received numerous honorary degrees.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Rizzoli Bookstore, 1133 Broadway, New York, United States
USD 0.00
