The most famous nostos—or "homeward journey"—in Greco-Roman literature is the arduous trip Odysseus makes after the Trojan War, as told in Homer's Odyssey. The longing for such a return forms the root of our word "nostalgia," first used in the seventeenth century. Today we look at how this original notion of nostalgia as "homesickness" morphed into our modern use of the word as a longing for the past. We also consider the idea of one's own consciousness as a kind of psychological home, captured in Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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