Enduring Appeal of the Odyssey: 2019 National Book Festival

Alberto Manguel discussed "Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey," Madeline Miller discussed "Circe" and Emily Wilson discussed her translation of "The Odyssey" at the 2019 Library of Congress National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.

Alberto Manguel is a writer, translator, editor and critic, but he would rather define himself as a reader. He was born in Buenos Aires and spent his childhood in Israel and his adolescence in Argentina. After living in Europe and the South Pacific, working as an editor, he moved to Canada in 1982 and became a Canadian citizen. There he wrote for Canadian newspapers, radio and television, as well as for many other publications around the world. From 2015 to 2018, he was the director of the National Library of Argentina. His previous books include "The Library at Night," "A Reader on Reading," "Curiosity" and "Packing My Library: An Elegy and Ten Digressions" (Yale University). He is also the author of "Homer's The Iliad and the Odyssey: A Biography."

Madeline Miller grew up in New York City and Philadelphia. She attended Brown University, where she earned her B.A. and M.A. in classics. She has taught and tutored Latin, Greek and Shakespeare to high school students for the past 20 years. "The Song of Achilles," Miller's first novel, was awarded the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction and was a New York Times best-seller. It has been translated into more than 25 languages was shortlisted for the 2012 Stonewall Writer of the Year. Her second novel, "Circe," was an instant No. 1 New York Times best-seller and won the 2018 Elle Big Book Award. Miller's essays have appeared in The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and many others.

Emily Wilson is professor of classical studies and chair of the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of "Mocked to Death: Tragic Overliving from Sophocles to Milton," "The Death of Socrates: Hero, Villain, Chatterbox, Saint" and "The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca," as well as the translator of "Six Tragedies of Seneca" and four plays by Euripides ("The Greek Plays") Her new work is the critically praised translation of Homer's "The Odyssey."

For transcript and more information, visit https://www.loc.gov/item/webcast-8846