Emily Wilson is halfway through a complete translator’s rewrite of Homer’s The Odyssey, and she says this new version is not a revision of the 2017 text. That matters to readers of The Odyssey because the scholar who made the poem newly legible in 2017 is now changing the rules of her own success.
Wilson’s 2017 version
Wilson told the last week, “It’s a complete retranslation. It’s not a revision of the old version,” and added, “I’m about halfway through.” Her 2017 translation was the first major English translation published by a woman, and it arrived in verse with a strict poetic meter, a steady rhythm and the same number of lines as Homer’s poem.
That earlier version was widely considered faithful and accessible, which is part of why the new project lands as more than a routine update. Wilson is not polishing the old text; she is rebuilding it from the ground up, a choice that turns a bestseller into a moving target for readers who have already bought into her first pass. Emily Blunt’s translator dream story shows how rarely a translation itself becomes the headline, let alone one that changes the market around it.
More lines, longer words
Wilson said the new translation will allow more lines, longer words and repetition of phrases, loosening the constraints that shaped the 2017 book. She also said she is going to quadruple the number of endnotes because endnotes are “really fun to write.”
Those changes point to a different reading experience, not just a different wording. The old version’s exact line count and strict meter forced compression; the new one gives Wilson room to slow down, expand a passage and leave more explanatory material on the page. For readers who use translations as working texts, that shift changes how much interpretive help sits beside the poem itself.
2023 Iliad approach
Wilson said the same approach is being used in her 2023 translation of The Iliad, so the new Odyssey is part of a broader method rather than a one-off reset. She is treating the poem as something that can be rethought after a successful first edition, not frozen by it.
That is a sharper position than the usual anniversary reissue. A first translation can become the reference point for classrooms and general readers, but a second, self-authored version lets the translator challenge her own choices while keeping the same name attached to the work. In practical terms, readers who expect the 2017 cadence will not be getting a cleaned-up copy; they will be getting a different tool for the same poem.
The Odyssey’s market
A representative for Audible told The Times last month that purchases of Wilson’s Odyssey translation were up by more than 600% year over year across Audible’s U.S., U.K. and Canadian marketplaces, and daily global title sales rose nearly sixfold during the week the movie premiered. Wilson’s 2017 translation was also a bestseller when it first hit bookshop shelves nearly 10 years ago.
Those numbers show why this new translator project lands as a business story as much as a literary one. The poem has been in circulation for 2,800 years, but Wilson’s version now sits inside a live sales cycle, with the adaptation effect still moving copies. The immediate reader takeaway is simple: the version that people can buy and study is no longer settled, and Wilson is actively rewriting the edition that helped define her reputation.
