Our pickBest retelling for newcomersThe vibe: warm and witty, Fry retelling the story like a friend who loves it.
There is a version of the Odyssey that skips the seminar entirely and just tells you the story, in the voice of the most reassuring narrator in Britain. That is this one, and the only thing you have to understand before pressing play is what it is not.
A retelling, not a translation
Every recording elsewhere on this site is Homer, carried into English by a translator and then read aloud. Fry's book is a step further from the source: he takes the events of the poem and rewrites them as his own prose, with his own jokes, his own connective tissue, and the occasional footnote delivered as an aside. It is Fry telling you about the Odyssey, brilliantly, rather than the Odyssey itself. Kept honest on the shelf, it sits nearer the adaptations than the translations, and the registry labels it exactly that way.
“I’m telling the story in such a way that it doesn’t matter if someone hasn’t remembered absolutely everything, they just trust that what comes next will be interesting.”
Stephen Fry, Publishers Weekly, March 2025What Fry's version does better than the poem
It removes every excuse. No epithets to decode, no patronymics to track, no wondering whether you were supposed to know who Eurycleia is. Fry front-loads the context, keeps the pace brisk, and makes the gods sound like a difficult family, which they are. As a first contact with the material, especially for a listener the film sent looking, it is close to frictionless, and it makes the eventual jump to a real translation far less daunting.
What the reviewers made of it
“With his distinctive narration, Fry brings warmth, exuberance and humour to these age-old stories, along with a range of voices.”The Guardian, on Fry’s Greek Myths narration, quoted by the publisher
“Fry is at his story-telling best … the gods will be pleased.”The Times, on Fry’s Greek Myths narration, quoted by the publisher
Who should take it, who should walk past
Take it if you want the story before the poem, if the verse translations have bounced you before, or if you would simply enjoy ten hours of Stephen Fry being amused by the Greeks. Walk past it if you want Homer's actual words, if a class assigned you a specific translation, or if you have already read the poem and want the performance of the language rather than a summary of the plot. For those, the house pick and the translation head-to-head are the right doors, and students should match the recording to the assigned edition instead.
Do you need the earlier books first?
One practical question the fan sites skip. This is the fourth and final volume of Fry’s Greek Myths series, after Mythos, Heroes, and Troy, and it stands on its own. You can start here cold and follow everything. The one that quietly helps is Troy, since it covers the ten-year war Odysseus is trudging home from, and Fry wrote both. Taken in order you catch more echoes, but nobody is grading you on prerequisites.
Penguin Books UK posted three exclusive excerpts of Fry reading the audiobook. Hear them on YouTube.
Fry, plainly
Is Stephen Fry's Odyssey the same as Homer's Odyssey?
No. Fry rewrites the story in his own modern prose and adds his own asides and jokes, so it is a retelling, not a translation. You get the plot, the characters, and Fry's warmth, but not Homer's actual lines. For those, pick a translation like Wilson read by Danes.
How long is Stephen Fry's Odyssey audiobook?
It runs 10 hrs 37 mins, unabridged, self-narrated, from Chronicle Books. That is roughly the length of the shorter verse translations, and it reads faster because it is plain modern prose rather than poetry.
Does Stephen Fry narrate the Odyssey himself?
Yes. Fry wrote this retelling and reads it himself, the fourth book in his Greek Myths series. His narration is the whole appeal: it is the audiobook equivalent of a very well-read friend telling you the story over a long dinner.