GE 4 WIL

Dear readers, coming home from long, wild and hopefully beautiful voyages—this is for you if you’re still in travelling mode: Welcome back with gender history, power relations, and feminist perspectives on antiquity.  A particular highlight—recommended to us by a reader—is Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Odyssey, the first major English version of the epic by a woman. Wilson’s clear, everyday-language rendering makes power and gender dynamics strikingly visible and has sparked worldwide debate since 2017.

Interestingly, Christopher Nolan cited Wilson’s translation as explicit inspiration for his recent film The Odyssey—especially her famous opening line, “Tell me about a complicated man.” Yet Wilson herself is sharply critical of the film; she has publicly stated she would be ashamed to have written even a single line of its screenplay.

While the film does feature several strong female characters—Penelope, Circe, Helen, Calypso—they remain conspicuously isolated and lonely in Nolan’s version. Accordingly, The Odyssey emphatically fails the famous Bechdel Test: there is no scene in which two named women talk to each other about anything other than a man.

Come and discover Wilson’s translation and other titles on gender, power, and antiquity in our collection—and don’t miss works by the creator of the Bechdel Test herself, also available at the CID.

The Odyssey – Book Review © 2026 by Kathrin Eckhart is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0