In this new verse adaptation, originally commissioned for BBC radio,
Simon Armitage has recast Homer's epic as a series of bristling dramatic
dialogues: between gods and men; between no-nonsense Captain Odysseus
and his unruly, lotus-eating, homesick companions; and between subtle
Odysseus (wiliest hero of antiquity) and a range of shape-shifting
adversaries--Calypso, Circe, the Sirens, the Cyclops--as he and his men
are pinballed between islands of adversity. One of the most individual
voices of his generation, Armitage revitalizes our sense of the
Odyssey as oral poetry, as indeed one of the greatest of tall tales.