The Odyssey

After the ten-year Trojan War, Odysseus, king of Ithaca, spends another ten years trying to get home, facing one peril after another. In his long absence he is presumed dead, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus must deal with a crowd of unruly suitors competing to marry her. Attributed to Homer and divided into 24 books, the epic ranks among the earliest literary works still in existence, and most modern scholars think it grew out of a long oral tradition, performed for listeners by rhapsodes. Its themes include homecoming, wandering, hospitality to guests, testing and omens. In 2018 a BBC Culture poll of experts around the world named it literature's most enduring narrative.

In an interview, CNN founder Ted Turner named it, with the Iliad and the Aeneid, among the classics that fascinated him as a college classics major.