【 ODYSSEY 】
book #4 in Stephen Fry’s Great Mythology

Genre: Mythology
Audience: Adult
Author: Stephen Fry
Published: September 2024
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Pages: 400 (paperback)

Magical and mesmerising as always. Stephen Fry holds a special place in my heart for his expert storytelling and ability to completely transport you to other worlds with his voice.

I highly recommend reading this via audiobook, not just to save yourself the struggle of pronunciation, but to enjoy the way Stephen narrates what could otherwise have been more boring stretches of text when there are a lot of names, places and facts to quickly cover. It’s much more immersive. Plus he does all the voices and it’s very much so like having your own father read you a bedtime story.

This has to be my favourite of the 4 Greek myth books he has done. I’ve always been a fan of Odysseus’s story, but more specifically, of Penelope’s. She’s hands down my favourite leading lady in Greek myth, and while she is more of a side character in this Odysseus-focussed retelling (I mean, that’s how the OG is), I nonetheless thoroughly enjoyed the way Stephen tried valiantly to paint and epic love story & devout faithfulness between Odysseus and Penelope, despite Odysseus’s frequently wandering eye making this quite challenging.

I can only hope that Stephen plans to do more of these.

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Title: Odyssey
Series: Stephen Fry’s Great Mythology
Author: Stephen Fry
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Can a hero find his way home? 

Follow Odysseus after he leaves the fallen city of Troy and takes ten long dramatic years—battling monsters, the temptations of goddesses and suffering the curse of Poseidon—to voyage home to his wife Penelope on the island of Ithaca.