We are all Homer’s children

Argentinian critic and translator Alberto Manguel has done something quite unique, and necessary for our time. He realized that writing a biography of Homer is impossible. Yet he understood that The Iliad and The Odyssey are, in fact, the foundations of Western civilization. But unlike most of us, who just accept that phrase — “the foundations of Western civilization” — he interrogated it, and traced the ways in which Homer’s narratives have been used, re-used, appropriated, and re-forged over these last 2,500 years. He’s written a biography of Homer’s works. A history of the poems. Read the review in The Washington Post. And then take Odysseus’s journey yourself — in a great deal more comfort and luxury.