Guest: Emily Wilson is a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been named a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome in Renaissance and early modern scholarship, a MacArthur Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow. In addition to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, she has also published translations of Sophocles, Euripides, and Seneca.

Contains:

The Iliad is an epic poem that recounts the ten-year Trojan War and explores themes of pride, honor, and the human condition. Wilson’s Iliad gives us a complete Homer for our generation and the first ever English translation by a woman.

The Rubaiyat is a manuscript of Persian verses attributed to Omar Khayyam, a 12th-century Persian mathematician and philosopher. The book contains pithy observations on complex subjects such as love, death, and the existence of God and an afterlife.

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