A remarkable hybrid of translation, adaptation, and invention
Picture the east Aegean sea by night,
And on a beach aslant its shimmering
Upwards of 50,000 men
Asleep like spoons beside their lethal Fleet.
“Your life at every instant up for― / Gone. / And, candidly, who gives a toss? / Your heart beats strong. Your spirit grips,” writes Christopher Logue in his original version of Homer’s Iliad, the uncanny “translation of translations” that won ecstatic and unparalleled acclaim as “the best translation of Homer since Pope’s” (New York Review of Books).
Logue’s account of Homer’s Iliad is a radical reimagining and reconfiguration of Homer’s tale of warfare, human folly, and the power of the gods in language and verse that is emphatically modern and “possessed of a very terrible beauty” (Slate). Illness prevented him from bringing his version of the Iliad to completion, but enough survives in notebooks and letters to assemble a compilation that includes the previously published volumes War Music, Kings, The Husbands, All Day Permanent Red, and Cold Calls, along with previously unpublished material, in one final illuminating volume arranged by his friend and fellow poet Christopher Reid. The result, War Music, comes as near as possible to representing the poet’s complete vision and confirms what his admirers have long known: that “Logue’s Homer is likely to endure as one of the great long poems of the twentieth century” (Times Literary Supplement).
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“Logue’s achievement is so impressive, at first disarming and then persuasive and satisfying…We are likely to return to [Homer’s poem] now with enlivened attention, our senses made more alert and our spirits enriched by this remarkable, brooding poem.”
— Chicago Tribune
“Christopher Logue has worked from what is still the greatest story of war ever told and created a vivid and fresh poem in a language he knew very well, indeed.”
— New York Times Book ReviewBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Christopher Logue (1926–2011), poet, playwright, scriptwriter, and actor, was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire. He moved to Paris in 1951, where he published his first books, Wand and Quadrant; Seven Sonnets; and Devil, Maggot, and Son. He won the Paris Review / Bernard F. O’Connor Award and was made a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for his contributions to literature.
Simon Vance (a.k.a. Robert Whitfield) is an award-winning actor and narrator. He has earned more than fifty Earphones Awards and won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration thirteen times. He was named Booklist’s very first Voice of Choice in 2008 and has been named an AudioFile Golden Voice as well as an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009. He has narrated more than eight hundred audiobooks over almost thirty years, beginning when he was a radio newsreader for the BBC in London. He is also an actor who has appeared on both stage and television.