Our pickBest for a big, booming voice, and the classroomThe vibe: big, old-school, and dramatic, the Odyssey with the thunder turned up.
Some recordings just become the reference. This is the Odyssey a whole generation means when they say they listened to it.
The grand, classic Odyssey. Robert Fagles’s expansive translation read by Ian McKellen, unabridged, recorded in 1999 and still the one people mean by the McKellen Odyssey. Big and theatrical, the common classroom pairing, and it finishes sooner than you would guess.
Earphones Award, AudioFile Magazine, 1997. Verified against the review itself, July 1997.
The Fagles sound
Fagles is the translation most living readers grew up calling Homer: expansive lines, the wine-dark sea, the man of twists and turns, a fixture of classrooms since 1996. It is the roomier English, and it sounds grander for it.
McKellen recorded it in 1999 with decades of Shakespeare behind him, and he treats every book like a soliloquy. He is wickedly funny, too, whenever Odysseus lies, which is often.
The clock surprise
Fuller text, brisker reader: this finishes about half an hour ahead of the Danes Wilson, which surprises everyone who assumes the bigger-sounding reading takes longer. The full runtime picture, drawn to scale, is on the runtime page.
“Recording The Odyssey in an airless studio over one week was toiling: but I enjoyed the challenge of characterising to the minimum.”
Ian McKellen on the 1999 sessions, mckellen.com, April 2000The argument about McKellen, and who is right
Two professionals reviewed this recording within six months of each other in 1997 and reached opposite verdicts. Both are worth your attention, because they disagree about the one thing that decides whether you finish it.
The case for
Fagles chose to preserve the iambic pentameter form which, as Ian McKellen presents it, is never singsong but always singing.L.R.S., AudioFile Magazine, July 1997 (Internet Archive copy)
It’s a deeply satisfying experience to listen to McKellen’s subtle, resonant voice weave the story.L.R.S., AudioFile Magazine, July 1997 (Internet Archive copy)
The case against
Ian McKellen reads the entire text at what seems to me a rather too rapid tempo. I found it difficult to listen to except with the text in hand.David Slavitt, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, January 1997 (Internet Archive copy)
They are describing the same performance and neither is wrong. McKellen moves, and he enjambs, which is to say he reads the sense of a line straight through its ending rather than pausing where the verse breaks. If you are following along in a copy of Fagles, that is genuinely hard to track, and Slavitt says so as a scholar reading with the book open. If you are simply listening, on a commute or a walk, the same choice is what stops thirteen hours of verse from sounding like a metronome. Our read: the tempo is a problem for students who need to find a passage and an asset for everyone else. If you are reading along, slow the playback slightly and it resolves.
Is the grand version right for you?
Pick this if
- You want the Odyssey to sound ancient and enormous
- Your class set or your shelf is already Fagles
- You love a big classical voice rolling through verse
Skip it if
- Elevated diction puts you off on a first listen, in which case Danes reading Wilson is the gentler door
- Your assigned translation is Wilson or Fitzgerald, so match the recording to the book
- You would rather the shortest complete version, which is Stevens reading Fitzgerald
Torn between this and the modern favorite? Settle it at the head-to-head, or take the site verdict.
If a class assigned you Fagles, the words line up. McKellen reads Robert Fagles’s 1996 Penguin translation unabridged, so it matches the Penguin Classics paperback on your syllabus. The catch is that audio has no page or line numbers. When you need to quote a passage in an essay, keep the print edition or a free line-numbered text open beside you. Listen for immersion, and cite from the page.
What buyers check first
Is this the version schools use?
Very often, yes. Fagles has been a classroom standard since the late nineties, which makes this recording the natural pair for an assigned Fagles paperback.
Does a 1999 recording sound dated?
It is a clean, close studio recording and perfectly listenable today. You are not signing up for a crackly cassette rip.
How long is the Ian McKellen Odyssey audiobook?
McKellen’s reading runs 13 hrs 3 mins, unabridged, recorded for Penguin Audio in 1999. Here is the oddity worth knowing: Fagles’s text is fuller than Wilson’s, yet this finishes sooner, because McKellen moves briskly where Danes savors.
Which translation does Ian McKellen read?
Robert Fagles’s 1996 translation, the expansive free-verse version that has been a classroom fixture since the late nineties. If your assigned or preferred text is Fagles, this recording matches it word for word.