# An Odyssey: A Father, A Son and an Epic: SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2017

Daniel Mendelsohn

From the award-winning, best-selling writer: a deeply moving tale of a father and son’s transformative journey in reading – and reliving – Homer’s epic masterpiece.‘My favourite classicist once again combines meticulous literary investigation with warm and wrenching human emotion – books like these are why I love reading’ LEE CHILDWhen eighty-one-year-old Jay Mendelsohn decides to enrol in the undergraduate seminar on the Odyssey that his son Daniel teaches at Bard College, the two find themselves on an adventure as profoundly emotional as it is intellectual. For Jay, a retired research scientist who sees the world through a mathematician’s unforgiving eyes, this return to the classroom is his ‘one last chance’ to learn about the great literature he’d neglected in his youth – and, even more, a final opportunity to understand his son.But through the sometimes-uncomfortable months that follow, as the two men explore Homer’s great work together – first in the classroom, where Jay persistently challenges his son’s interpretations, and then during a surprise-filled Mediterranean journey retracing Odysseus’ legendary voyages – it becomes clear that Daniel has much to learn, too: for Jay’s responses to both the text and the travels gradually uncover long-buried secrets that allow the son to understand his difficult father at last. As this intricately woven memoir builds to its wrenching climax, Mendelsohn’s narrative comes to echo The Odyssey itself, with its timeless themes of deception and recognition, marriage and children, the pleasures of travel and the meaning of home.Rich with literary and emotional insight, An Odyssey is a renowned author-scholar’s most revelatory entwining yet of personal narrative and literary exploration.

## Copyright

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com

This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2017

Copyright © 2017 by Daniel Mendelsohn

Cover illustration © Ael / Alamy Stock Photo

Daniel Mendelsohn asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780007545124

Ebook Edition © September 2017 ISBN: 9780007545148

Version: 2018-05-03

## Dedication

For my mother

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Author’s Note

Proem

Telemachy

1. Paideusis

2. Homophrosynê

Apologoi

Nostos

Anagnorisis

Sêma

Acknowledgments

Permissions Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Daniel Mendelsohn

About the Publisher

## Author’s Note

For the purposes of narrative coherence and in consideration of the privacy of the students in my Odyssey seminar and the passengers aboard the “Retracing the Odyssey” cruise, names have been changed and a number of details relating to events and characters have been modified.

All translations from Greek and Latin are my own.

### PROEM. (Invocation)


### 1964–2011

The plot of the Odyssey is not long in the telling. A man has been away from home for many years; Poseidon is always on the watch for him; he is all alone. As for the situation at home, his goods are being laid waste by the Suitors, who plot against his son. After a storm-tossed journey, he returns home, where he reveals himself, destroys his enemies, and is saved.

—ARISTOTLE, Poetics