Emily Wilson retranslating Homer's Odyssey

Emily Wilson, the first woman to publish an English translation of Homer's Odyssey, is retranslating the ancient epic from the ground up. The scholar announced the project less than a decade after her 2017 version became a bestseller.

Wilson told the Associated Press the work is a complete retranslation, not a revision. She is approximately halfway through the process. In an interview with the New York Times, she explained her new approach will be closer to her translation of the Iliad, using somewhat more lines than the original Greek to allow for more varied word length and pacing.

Reaction to Nolan's Film

The announcement follows a summer controversy where Wilson criticized director Christopher Nolan's blockbuster film adaptation of the Odyssey. Nolan had cited Wilson's 2017 translation, including its famous opening line, as an influence on his movie.

Writing in the London Review of Books, Wilson was scathing. She argued Nolan's Odyssey lacked many elements that make the poem great, calling the writing abysmal. She said the film's characters lacked convincing motivation, contained no sex scenes, and featured unappetizing food. Novelist Joyce Carol Oates accused Wilson of haughty superiority in response to the critique.

The film, released in July and starring Tom Holland and Zendaya, was a massive commercial success. It earned $264 million globally in its opening weekend. The movie also drove a huge surge in book sales, with UK print sales of the poem increasing by 1,400% in the four weeks to July 25 compared to the same period in 2025.

A New Scholarly Approach

Wilson's decision to revisit the Odyssey predates the film debate. She discussed her desire to return to Homer in a spring interview for the podcast Instant Classics. While proud of her first translation, she now sees room for different choices.

She has indicated she will probably retain the opening line, Tell me about a complicated man. However, Wilson stated her original translation relied too heavily on the blanket term slave. She now believes more precise terminology could better reflect the varied forms of enslavement depicted in the poem.

The new edition will also contain significantly more scholarly commentary. Wilson said she is also going to quadruple the number of endnotes because endnotes are really fun to write.

The Precedent of Retranslation

While a translator revisiting their own major work is unusual, it is not without precedent. Matthew Reynolds, a professor of English and comparative criticism at Oxford University, noted several examples.

Reynolds explained this practice shows literary translation is a continual exploratory process, not merely a search for a single correct version. Wilson's new Odyssey translation does not yet have a scheduled publication date.