Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey

The stories of the Trojan war and Helen of Troy, Patroclus and Achilles, the Sirens and the Cyclops are embedded in western culture, yet readers often fail to recognise that they were made famous by two epic poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey, and one blind poet: Homer. Alberto Manguel begins his book with the poems' inception in ancient Greece and demonstrates how these poems have reverberated subs...