The Financial Times says there has been a rise in translations and novels inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, with works by Pat Barker and Madeline Miller among the latest to keep the ancient epic in circulation. Emily Wilson, the classicist at the centre of the piece, calls Odysseus “a different kind of conman.” That line lands neatly in a media ecosystem that loves old myths when they can be repackaged, resold, and made to feel timeless without ever threatening the people who profit from cultural prestige.
Myth, Market, and the Same Old Gatekeepers
The article is built around the continuing fascination with translations and reimaginings of the Odyssey. That fascination has produced more books, more commentary, and more room for the same cultural institutions to present themselves as guardians of civilisation while they decide which voices get amplified and which get filed away. The Financial Times frames the trend as a literary one, but the facts it cites point to a familiar pattern: elite culture keeps renewing itself by turning inherited stories into fresh commodities.
Pat Barker and Madeline Miller are named as examples of writers whose work has joined the rise in Odyssey-inspired novels. Their presence in the piece shows how the ancient text keeps being pulled back into the present, not as a dead relic but as a profitable source of reinterpretation. The market loves a classic. It loves it even more when the classic can be made to look newly relevant, preferably with a glossy cover and a respectable review.
Emily Wilson’s comment on Odysseus sharpens that point. Calling him “a different kind of conman” strips away some of the heroic varnish that usually protects the great men of the canon. The article doesn’t turn that into a broader attack on the institutions that preserve these myths, but the phrase itself does some work. It suggests that the celebrated trickster at the centre of the epic is not just a survivor or a strategist. He’s also a fraud with better branding.
Achilles, Reception, and the Canon’s Afterlife
The piece also discusses Achilles’ role in The Iliad and how that portrayal shapes modern reception of the ancient epics. That matters because the canon doesn’t survive on reverence alone. It survives through constant reinterpretation, through the careful management of which characters are seen as noble, tragic, or useful to the present moment. Achilles keeps getting re-read because the institutions around literature need him to keep meaning something.
Modern reception, in the article’s terms, is not a neutral process. It’s a filter. It decides what gets remembered, what gets taught, and what gets sold as cultural inheritance. The same machinery that elevates Homer also keeps the conversation safely inside approved boundaries. The epics can be endlessly revisited, but only on terms that leave the broader structures of prestige untouched.
That’s the quiet trick of the whole thing. A rise in translations sounds democratic. More voices, more access, more versions. But the article’s own framing stays inside the world of established publishers, named authors, and high-cultural commentary. The gate doesn’t disappear. It just gets repainted.
The Financial Times title says it plainly enough: “Classicist Emily Wilson: ‘Odysseus is a different kind of conman’.” The line is memorable because it cuts through the heroic fog. The rest of the piece shows how easily that fog gets rebuilt, one translation and one prestige novel at a time.