Author: Emily Hauser, Senior Lecturer in Classics, University of Exeter

Stephen Fry’s Odyssey is the final instalment in his retellings of Greek myth that began with Mythos. Here, Fry tells us, we move away from the turbulent creation of the gods and the swashbuckling heroes of old, into “a profoundly human story”: a tale of one man’s journey home “to a world of farm and family”. But it turns out that, somewhat surprisingly, the “hero” who is looking for home isn’t only Odysseus. In Odyssey’s first half, despite the title, we find the Odysseus story interweaving with those of Agamemnon, Ajax (the one who raped Cassandra and caused Athena’s wrath…