Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea

 

Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature by Emily Wilson, 288 pages.

This book collects and reworks decades of Emily Wilson's essays on translation and the Greek and Latin classics into a single book. The book is wide-ranging, and the chapters aren't particularly closely related, but it gives particular weight to the ways translation can both help convey and alienate the cultural values. This book is described as being accessible to readers without a classics background, which I do believe to be through. However, I think a reader without a background in some sort of related academic field (literature, history, etc), would probably have a bit of a rough time. I personally really enjoyed the sections that were very focused on translation itself, especially the last chapter, which compares side-by-side how many translators have interpreted the same lines of the Odyssey. However, I'm afraid I found the chapters that were functionally an ancient literature review fairly tedious. I think this is a great book to check out from the library and read whatever chapters sound interesting, but I don't know if I would recommend reading it straight through. 

This book is scheduled to be released 9/1/2026.