An Odyssey
A Father, a Son, and an Epic
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Narrated by:
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Bronson Pinchot
About this listen
From award-winning memoirist and critic, and best-selling author of The Lost: a deeply moving tale of a father and son's transformative journey in reading - and reliving - Homer's epic masterpiece.
When 81-year-old Jay Mendelsohn decides to enroll in the undergraduate Odyssey seminar his son 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 more fully understand his son, a writer and classicist. But through the sometimes uncomfortable months that 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's famous voyages - it becomes clear that Daniel has much to learn, too: Jay's responses to both the text and the travels gradually uncover long-buried secrets that allow the son 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 author-scholar's most triumphant entwining yet of personal narrative and literary exploration.
©2017 Daniel Mendelsohn (P)2017 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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A chilling novel about the nightmare of a corrupt and brutal dictatorship. The star of Roberto Bolano's hair-raising novel Distant Star is Alberto Ruiz-Tagle, an air force pilot who exploits the 1973 coup to launch his own version of the New Chilean Poetry, a multimedia enterprise involving sky-writing, poetry, torture, and photo exhibitions. For our unnamed narrator, who first encounters this "star" in a college poetry workshop, Ruiz-Tagle becomes the silent hand behind every evil act in the darkness of Pinochet's regime.
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Omg
- By Sierra on 08-03-16
By: Roberto Bolano
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The Chosen
- By: Chaim Potok
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Though they've lived their entire lives less than five blocks from each other, Reuven Malter and Danny Saunders exist in very different worlds. Reuven blends easily into both his secular Jewish faith and his typical American teen life, while Danny's conservative Hasidic clothes and appearance make him stick out in any crowd. Their improbable friendship teaches them that the differences separating people through cultures and generations are never as great as they seem.
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truly rates overused "classic" label
- By connie on 11-05-08
By: Chaim Potok
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What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours
- Stories
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Gideon, Piter Marek, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In "Books and Roses", one special key opens a library, a garden, and clues to at least two lovers' fates. In "Is Your Blood as Red as This?", an unlikely key opens the heart of a student at a puppeteering school. "'Sorry' Doesn't Sweeten Her Tea" involves a "house of locks", where doors can be closed only with a key - with surprising unobservable developments. And in "If a Book Is Locked There's Probably a Good Reason for That Don't You Think", a key keeps a mystical diary locked (for good reason).
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clever
- By jared rogerson on 03-15-18
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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Last Evenings on Earth
- By: Roberto Bolano, Chris Andrews - translator
- Narrated by: David Crommett
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The first short-story collection in English by the acclaimed Chilean author Roberto Bolano. Winner of a 2005 PEN Translation Fund Award. "The melancholy folklore of exile", as Roberto Bolano once put it, pervades these 14 haunting stories. Bolano's narrators are usually writers grappling with private (and generally unlucky) quests, who typically speak in the first person, as if giving a deposition, like witnesses to a crime.
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Solid Character based Stories
- By Michael on 06-06-24
By: Roberto Bolano, and others
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Dreams from My Father
- A Story of Race and Inheritance
- By: Barack Obama
- Narrated by: Barack Obama
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a Black African father and a White American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a Black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father - a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man - has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey - first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family.
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Powerful
- By Gene R. on 10-26-21
By: Barack Obama
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Things I've Been Silent About
- By: Azar Nafisi
- Narrated by: Naila Azad
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Azar Nafisi, author of the beloved international best seller Reading Lolita in Tehran, now gives us a stunning personal story of growing up in Iran, memories of her life lived in thrall to a powerful and complex mother, against the background of a country's political revolution.
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Family portrait in the frame of history
- By Galina COS on 07-02-16
By: Azar Nafisi
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Trying to Save Piggy Sneed
- By: John Irving
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Trying to Save Piggy Sneed contains a dozen short works by John Irving, beginning with three memoirs, including an account of Mr. Irving’s dinner with President Ronald Reagan at the White House. The longest of the memoirs, The Imaginary Girlfriend,” is the core of this collection.
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Unabridged?
- By K. Stiffler on 02-11-22
By: John Irving
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Without You, There Is No Us
- My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite
- By: Suki Kim
- Narrated by: Janet Song
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields - except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST).
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The King and I meets Mary Poppins
- By Michael on 02-22-15
By: Suki Kim
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The Night Ocean
- By: Paul La Farge
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends - or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears.
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Frustratingly Uneven Due to Clumsy Plot Structure
- By Adam on 06-15-17
By: Paul La Farge
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The Mathematician's Shiva
- By: Stuart Rojstaczer
- Narrated by: Angela Brazil, Stephen R. Thorne
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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When the greatest female mathematician in history passes away, her son, Alexander "Sasha" Karnokovitch, just wants to mourn his mother in peace. But rumor has it the notoriously eccentric Polish émigré has solved one of the most difficult problems in all of mathematics and has spitefully taken the solution to her grave. A ragtag group of mathematicians from around the world descends upon Rachela's shiva, determined to find the proof or solve it for themselves - even if it means prying up the floorboards for notes.
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Great read
- By Lee Crowe on 07-27-15
What listeners say about An Odyssey
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- AKB
- 08-28-18
A voyage for all of us
This is an astounding and moving book. Part psychological meditation on identity, part linguistic and mythological explication, having Mendelsohn as a guide is having the best teacher you could imagine. His compassion, insight and love of both his father and his students--as well as his subject--were spot on. I was sorry to reach the end.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Edward Martinez
- 09-26-18
nice story
it's like being in a real good book club for Homer's The Odyssey, different perspectives and insights throughout.
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- Tim
- 10-26-22
Beautiful story
This was a beautifully told story about how stories connect us across generations — told with both heart and
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- Paula Mack Drill
- 08-24-18
A Gift of a Memoir
This book is one of those where I felt completely bereft when it was finished. I have loved listening to this multi faceted story. Every level interconnects from what we learn about ancient languages to the epic itself, about a teacher and students, and most of all, about fathers and sons. Beautifully crafted. I am left with so many things to think about. Thank you, Daniel Mendelssohn.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 02-23-21
Pretty nice
Interesting book, good insight on oddyssey class and father-son relationship.
But the narrator was in my opinion irritating and pathetic. He read it like some high school drama class...
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- Sarah Duffy
- 01-27-23
Beautiful story & writing
This book was fascinating! I added so much to my meager memory of reading The Odyssey 50 years ago. The father/son conversations were so real to me. I have been moved by this book and will recommend it to others.
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- Charlie Golf
- 10-07-18
History woven into a nice tribute to a father
I enjoyed this book. It was well written and the narration was fabulous. It did get tedious at one or two points when the college professor couldn't help but lecture on and on. However, if you stuck with it, he wove the tale of Odysseus, his father Laertes, and his son, Telemachus, into his own life, where his dad played a starring role. I really enjoyed the portrayal of Dr. Mendelsohn's father, who enrolled in his son's seminar on the Odyssey. The voice of the authors' parents were so well rendered and so colorful it kept me going through the more pedantic passages.
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1 person found this helpful
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- sparkster
- 05-06-18
Breathtakingly poignant
I was swept away by the beautiful descriptions of a father and son and the epic poem through which they connect. The narration was as tender-hearted, finely tuned and compassionate as the prose. Bravo!
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- kgohl
- 04-22-18
Old Bardian buys book
Am I the only old Bardian out there who buys this book to imagine themselves back in a freshman seminar? Probably not. But even if you are not an old Bardian, even if you have only a passing interest in the topics mentioned in the subtitle, you'll find yourself drawn in by the author, his family, his study of the classics, his circling, his discussion of the Odyssey, and his relationships with students. I had expected to enjoy the book, but I had not expected to become so entangled. It is a delight.
I should also mention that the narration by Bronson Pinchot is beautifully done. I had to keep reminding myself that this was not the author reading.
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- s reiter
- 08-10-20
Incredible
Poignant, moving, erudite, thought-provoking. An absolutely wonderful book. If you are not in tears at the end of the book then you have a heart of stone. Great performance as well.
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