Recommendations
Books Like The Odyssey
Best books to read after The Odyssey by Homer
Readers who love The Odyssey by Homer are drawn to its combination of the greatest journey narrative in literature, Odysseus's cunning against monsters and gods, Penelope's loyal resistance, and the deep longing for home that drives the whole poem. They want works that deal with the journey as metaphor, the trickster hero, the faithful spouse who holds things together, and the tradition of writers who have rewritten Homer's wanderer in their own time.
- 1Buy
The Iliad
by Homer
Homer's first epic, the war Odysseus is returning from — the two poems are a single vision of the Trojan War and its costs; readers of the Odyssey should begin with the Iliad to understand what Odysseus survived and why coming home matters.
- 2Buy
Ulysses
by James Joyce
The most celebrated modern retelling of the Odyssey — Joyce maps Homer's entire structure onto a single day in Dublin, 1904; Leopold Bloom's wandering through the city is Odysseus's wandering through the Mediterranean, and Joyce's novel is the essential demonstration of what Homer's poem continues to mean.
- 3Buy
The Penelopiad
by Margaret Atwood
Atwood's novella retelling the Odyssey from Penelope's perspective and the twelve hanged maids' — she gives voice to those Homer marginalizes and asks why the women pay the price for the men's stories; the most direct feminist counter-reading of the Odyssey in contemporary fiction.
- 4Buy
Circe
by Madeline Miller
Miller's retelling from Circe's perspective — the witch who turns Odysseus's men to pigs and becomes his lover narrates her own long life among gods and mortals; Miller makes Circe the centre of her own story and the Odysseus episode one chapter in a much longer life.
- 5Buy
Omeros
by Derek Walcott
Walcott's epic verse novel retelling Homer in the Caribbean — the Odyssey's structure of wandering and longing for home maps onto the displaced people of St. Lucia; the most ambitious modern reworking of Homeric themes in world literature.
- 6Buy
The Aeneid
by Virgil
Virgil's epic follows Aeneas after the fall of Troy, paralleling Odysseus's journey — the first six books model Aeneas's wandering on the Odyssey before the Iliad's war is echoed in the final six; the essential classical bridge between Homer and the European epic tradition.
- 7Buy
Gilgamesh
by Anonymous (trans. Stephen Mitchell)
The oldest surviving epic, the Sumerian poem that precedes Homer by fifteen centuries — Gilgamesh's quest for immortality after his friend Enkidu's death is the journey narrative that predates the Odyssey and illuminates what is universal in Homer's themes of loss, wandering, and the longing to return.
- 8Buy
Odysseus Abroad
by Amit Chaudhuri
The Indian literary novel that situates itself in the Odyssey tradition — Chaudhuri's narrator, a young Indian student in London, wanders the city with his eccentric uncle in a quietly comic evocation of Odysseus and Telemachus; one of the most understated and intelligent responses to Homer in contemporary fiction.
More The Odyssey Resources
More Reading Recommendations
View all →Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.