Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea

What Translator Emily Wilson Thinks of Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey'

Plain English with Derek Thompson, 22 July 2026. The author is the guest. The book comes up at 4 min 55 sec in.

Emily Wilson's new book Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea is introduced as her latest work. Derek Thompson draws on it to ask how our relationship to ancient literature has changed and notes it contains chapters comparing different translators' handling of the same Odyssey passages. Wilson also invokes it when discussing how people have historically misunderstood what 'the canon' means.

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