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From the best-selling author of ´The Lost´, a deeply moving tale of a father, a son and the lessons of a lifetime told through a transformative journey in reading - and reliving - Homer´s epic masterpiece.

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When eighty-one-year-old Jay Mendelsohn decides to enrol in the undergraduate seminar on the Odyssey that his son Daniel teaches at Bard College, the two find themselves on an adventure as profoundly emotional as it is intellectual. For Jay, a retired research scientist who sees the world through a mathematician´s unforgiving eyes, this return to the classroom is his one last chance to learn the great literature he´d neglected in his youth and, even more, a final opportunity to understand his son.
But through the sometimes uncomfortable months that follow, as the two men explore Homer´s great work together first in the classroom, where Jay persistently challenges his son´s interpretations, and then during a surprise-filled Mediterranean journey retracing Odysseus´ legendary voyages it becomes clear that Daniel has much to learn, too. For Jay´s responses to both the text and the travels gradually uncover long-buried secrets that allow the Daniel to understand his difficult father at last. As this intricately woven memoir builds to its wrenching climax, Mendelsohn´s narrative comes to echo the Odyssey itself, with its timeless themes of deception and recognition, marriage and children, the pleasures of travel and the meaning of home.
Rich with literary and emotional insight, An Odyssey is a renowned writer´s most revelatory entwining yet of personal narrative and literary exploration.

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Daniel Mendelsohn, Jahrgang 1960, studierte klassische Philologie an der Universität von Virginia und an der Princeton-Universität, wo er auch promovierte. Er veröffentlicht Artikel, Essays und Kritiken u.a. in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books und The Nation. 2001 erhielt er den National Book Critics Circle Award und 2002 den George Jean Nathan Prize for Drama Criticism. Mendelsohn lebt in New York und New Jersey.

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