Emily Wilson, the scholar whose celebrated 2017 English translation of Homer’s ancient epic captivated readers and inspired one of cinema’s biggest openings, is set to retranslate The Odyssey entirely from the ground up. The decision, which predates her public demolition of Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film version, has reignited fierce debate about how the West’s most storied poem should be rendered for modern audiences.
A New Take on an Ancient Masterpiece
Wilson, who made history as the first woman to translate the 8th-century BC poem into English, announced she is roughly halfway through the fresh rendering. Speaking to the Associated Press, she was emphatic about the scope of the undertaking: “It’s a complete retranslation. It’s not a revision of the old version.” In a separate interview with the New York Times, she outlined her revised methodology, noting she would draw closer to the approach she used for her Iliad translation and employ somewhat more lines than Homer’s original. This, she explained, would allow for greater variety in word length and pacing across the text.
The original 2017 edition became a bestseller precisely because it stripped away centuries of dense academic jargon, presenting a 3,000-year-old narrative that felt startlingly immediate. Wilson now believes she can push further, enriching the poem with expanded scholarly apparatus. She revealed she intends to quadruple the number of endnotes, quipping that “endnotes are really fun to write.” She also acknowledged that her first version leaned too heavily on the word “slave,” and that more precise terminology could better reflect the nuanced forms of servitude woven throughout Homer’s world.
The Nolan Feud That Put Translation in the Spotlight
The timing of Wilson’s announcement has inevitably drawn attention to her blistering takedown of Nolan’s adaptation, which hit cinemas in July this year and starred Tom Holland, Zendaya, Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway. Writing in the London Review of Books, Wilson did not hold back. “Nolan’s Odyssey lacks many of the elements that make the poem great,” she wrote. “The writing is abysmal.” She went further, arguing that none of the characters possessed convincing motivation, that the film contained no sex scenes, and that all the food depicted looked “horrible.” “I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script,” she added.
The remarks sent shockwaves through both literary and film circles. Novelist Joyce Carol Oates pushed back sharply, accusing Wilson of “haughty superiority.” Yet the controversy proved extraordinarily good for the poem’s commercial fortunes. UK print sales of The Odyssey surged by 1,400% in the four weeks leading up to 25 July compared with the same period in 2025, after the film’s mid-July release. Nolan’s version raked in $264m (£196m) during its opening weekend alone — the director’s biggest debut ever — and Wilson’s own translation was cited prominently as a creative influence, including its now-iconic opening line: “Tell me about a complicated man.”
What Will Change in the New Edition
Wilson has indicated she will “probably” retain that celebrated opening sentence, suggesting continuity even amid radical reinvention. The new translation promises to be a markedly different reading experience, shaped by a decade of scholarship and a willingness to interrogate choices she once considered definitive. Her desire to revisit Homer was already taking shape before the summer row; a recording made in the spring for the ancient-history podcast Instant Classics captured Wilson expressing pride in her original work while acknowledging the constraints she had faced.
“I’m proud of my Odyssey translation … I think there are lots of good things about the kinds of compression and choices that I was forced into,” she said at the time. Now, freed from those constraints, she appears determined to offer readers a richer, more layered encounter with the text.
A Tradition of Reinvention
Wilson’s decision to revisit her own landmark work is uncommon but far from unprecedented. Matthew Reynolds, professor of English and comparative criticism at Oxford University, pointed to a long lineage of translators who have returned to their own creations. Elizabeth Barrett Browning completely rewrote her rendering of Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound. Ezra Pound revised his translations of Guido Cavalcanti multiple times across his career. And Yu JongHo translated Jane Eyre into Korean first in 1970 and again in 2004.
As Reynolds observed, such cases reveal that translation — particularly literary translation — is never simply a matter of getting it right or wrong, good or bad. It is, instead, a continual exploratory process of interpretive reimagining and remaking. Each generation of translator brings fresh eyes, updated sensibilities, and sometimes hard-won critiques back to the source.
No publication date has been confirmed for Wilson’s new Odyssey, leaving readers and scholars to wait and wonder what the next chapter of this extraordinary literary conversation will look like.
Why it Matters
Wilson’s decision to retranslate The Odyssey is far more than a scholarly curiosity — it speaks to a broader cultural reckoning with how humanity’s foundational stories are passed down, reinterpreted, and contested across millennia. When a blockbuster film can drive book sales up by 1,400% in a matter of weeks, it reminds us that ancient narratives remain extraordinarily potent forces in the modern imagination. Wilson’s willingness to subject her own celebrated work to scrutiny, and to invite public debate about fidelity, accessibility, and representation, sets a bold precedent for how classical texts can evolve without losing their essence. In an era when audiences are increasingly vocal about the stories they consume and the values embedded within them, her new translation may well become the definitive English rendering for generations to come.
