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Books

A woman’s version of the Trojan War

Will Caroline Alexander’s translation of the Iliad — the first in English by a woman — prove the definitive one?

9 April 2016

9:00 AM

9 April 2016

9:00 AM

The Iliad: A New Translation Caroline Alexander

Vintage Classics, pp.554, £25, ISBN: 9781784870560

The Iliad begins with a grudge and ends with a funeral. In between are passages, if not necessarily of boredom, to alter the war adage, of lists, pathos, sex, humour, fairytale strangeness (golden fembots, a talking horse) and lyric images, punctuated by moments of pure terror (eyes popped out of heads, a spear throbbing in a beating heart, a man cradling his intestines in his hands).

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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £25 Tel: 08430 600033. A.E. Stallings is a poet and translator; her books include Olives, Hapax and Archaic Smile. She received a MacArthur ‘genius’ fellowship in 2011.

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