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Return to Ithaca: an excellent modernist retelling of the Odyssey
With the movie coming out imminently, I am reminded of a book I read last year that I really enjoyed: Eyvind Johnson's *Return to Ithaca* (1946).
I read this book as a part of a quest to read a representative novel by every Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. Eyvind Johnson was a controversial Nobel winner back in the 1970s, but this was one of my favorite books from that quest.
This book takes the original poem (which I love) and retells it in the form of a complex and psychological modernist novel. It depicts a profoundly unhappy Odysseus, a man who holds deep guilt over his actions in the Trojan War and the adventures of his voyage (which he exaggerates in the retelling from more mundane disasters to the myths we know today), and a man who after two decades away doesn't particularly *want* to go home. It also gives Penelope and Telemachus roughly equal weight in the story. It's certainly not a retelling that focuses on the adventures of Odysseus, rather it's a retelling that focuses on the homecoming itself (which the original poem does as well, I think more than many people who haven't read it realize).
If you get the chance and you like the Odyssey (and you like modernism), I would highly recommend. Unfortunately it's out of print, and I had some trouble getting my hands on it. Had to order it through interlibrary loan. Worth it, though!
#entertainment
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With the movie coming out imminently, I am reminded of a book I read last year that I really enjoyed: Eyvind Johnson's *Return to Ithaca* (1946).
I read this book as a part of a quest to read a representative novel by every Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. Eyvind Johnson was a controversial Nobel winner back in the 1970s, but this was one of my favorite books from that quest.
This book takes the original poem (which I love) and retells it in the form of a complex and psychological modernist novel. It depicts a profoundly unhappy Odysseus, a man who holds deep guilt over his actions in the Trojan War and the adventures of his voyage (which he exaggerates in the retelling from more mundane disasters to the myths we know today), and a man who after two decades away doesn't particularly *want* to go home. It also gives Penelope and Telemachus roughly equal weight in the story. It's certainly not a retelling that focuses on the adventures of Odysseus, rather it's a retelling that focuses on the homecoming itself (which the original poem does as well, I think more than many people who haven't read it realize).
If you get the chance and you like the Odyssey (and you like modernism), I would highly recommend. Unfortunately it's out of print, and I had some trouble getting my hands on it. Had to order it through interlibrary loan. Worth it, though!
#entertainment
source
| 2,000 mlx | |
| 5 | |
| 0 |