Author Description

The classics are rapidly receding from public consciousness, and modern revisions of them, such as the film O Brother, Where Art Thou, are in genuine danger of never being linked to their original inspiration. Noted classicist Stanley Lombardo breathes new life into one of the most famous and beloved ancient works with an engaging and vibrant audio performance of Homer's Iliad. This state-of-the-art compact disc recording provides high-quality access to one of the greatest works in world literature. "Gripping... Lombardo’s achievement is all the more striking when you consider the difficulties of his task... He manages to be respectful of Homer’s dire spirit while providing... some wonderfully fresh refashioning of his Greek. The result is a vivid and disarmingly hardbitten reworking of a great classic."—Daniel Mendelsohn, The New York Times Book Review More than 3,000 years after the fall of Troy, here at last is a rendition of the Homeric epic that everybody can understand and appreciate. The world can't hear Homer speak his own words, but Stanley Lombardo is the next best thing. Reading his own acclaimed (unabdriged) translations, Lombardo's insightful rendition takes advantage of the rhythms and other poetic resources of everyday American speech. The result provides cinematic and performance qualities to the time-honored poetry—sharp scene cuts, dynamic language, urgency of the characters (human and divine). His virtuoso performance in these audiobooks reflects years of experience before a wide variety of audiences—beautifully paced, shaped, intoned, and acted throughout. Stanley Lombardo is a Professor of Classics at Kansas University