Our pickBest for first-time listenersThe vibe: clear, modern, and unhurried, the poem without the homework feeling.
Every catalog needs a default, the version you hand someone who just wants the poem without a seminar attached. In this catalog, that job belongs here, and it is not close.
Best for most first-time listeners. The complete poem, unabridged, in Emily Wilson’s modern verse, read close and unhurried by Claire Danes. Clear and quick to get into. Not the one if you want a big, booming, old-fashioned sound, or your class assigned a different translation.
Why this is the default
Wilson’s 2017 translation matched Homer line for line in iambic pentameter, which sounds like a technicality until you hear what it does: the poem stops posing and starts moving. Her opening, “Tell me about a complicated man,” told you the whole project in seven words. Danes reads it close to the microphone and close to the meaning, no funny voices, no marble, and the Cyclops cave plays like a heist going wrong in real time, which is exactly what it is.
“I decided to keep mine the same number of lines as the original, rather than expanding (as the vast majority of translators do).”
Emily Wilson on her translation, Chicago Review of Books, January 2018If you are arriving from Nolan’s film with no Greek and no reading list, this is the version that meets you where you are. Wilson writes plainer English than the older translations, which reach for muse and craft and guile where she simply says what happened, and Danes reads it without a trace of throat-clearing. It never talks down to a newcomer, which is exactly why we hand it to first-timers before anything else.
Audible published a short behind-the-scenes interview with Claire Danes about this recording. Watch it on YouTube.
What listeners say
“Listening to a wandering teller of tales entertaining at a banquet some millennia ago.”Audible listener review, on the listing
“A little too flat.”The recurring criticism, from another Audible reviewer on the same listing
Both takes are real and both describe the same choice: Danes underplays. If you want a narrator who disappears into the story, that restraint is the appeal. If you want a narrator who performs the storm, it will read as reserve, and McKellen is one page over.
Who it is for, who should skip it
Pick this if
- It is your first Odyssey, or the film sent you looking
- You want modern, plain English that keeps moving
- You would rather a narrator underplay than perform every storm
- You have roughly thirteen and a half hours to give it
Skip it if
- You want the poem to sound like an ancient monument, which is McKellen reading Fagles
- Your class assigned a different translation, so match the recording to the book instead
- You want the shortest unabridged listen, which is Stevens reading Fitzgerald
Still weighing it against the grand alternative? The full comparison is at Danes vs McKellen, and why this one tops our overall pick is laid out there.
When Emily Wilson’s translation appeared in 2017, it was the first full English translation of the Odyssey published by a woman, in a line of English versions running back more than four hundred years.
Asked about this recording
Is the Claire Danes Odyssey abridged?
No. It is the complete poem. Wilson’s translation is leaner on the page because she kept Homer’s line count; Danes’s unhurried, close-in reading is why the clock still says 13 hrs 32 mins.
Is Emily Wilson’s translation accurate?
It is line for line with the Greek, which is stricter discipline than most translations attempt. What people register as modern is her word choice, not loose paraphrase.
How long is the Claire Danes Odyssey audiobook?
It runs 13 hrs 32 mins, unabridged, from Audible Studios. Wilson keeps Homer’s original line count, so the text is lean, but Danes reads it close and unhurried, which is why the clock still lands in the middle of the big three translations.
Is this the Odyssey version connected to the Nolan movie?
As close as any recording gets. Nolan named Emily Wilson’s translation as the one he had in mind, in an Empire interview, and Danes reads exactly that translation. If you want the audiobook that lines up with the film’s source, this is the one to start with.