The Odyssey [Hardcover]

Homer's poem takes Odysseus from the end of the Trojan War on a ten year return to Ithaca, while at home his wife and son hold off the suitors eating through the household. This Penguin Select Classics hardcover runs 328 pages. The structure is worth knowing before starting: the narrative opens late in the story, spends its early books with Telemachus, then lets Odysseus recount the Cyclops, Circe and the underworld himself at a stranger's feast. That flashback design is one of the oldest in Western storytelling and still shapes how novels and films handle a hero's backstory. A closer look: • 328-page hardcover in the Penguin Select Classics line • The complete epic of Odysseus and his homecoming • Built on a flashback structure narrated in part by its hero • A foundation text for world literature and mythology study A sound pick for students of classical literature and general readers building a shelf of epics, published under Penguin Select Classics and available at Boipoka.