{"id":1114,"date":"2026-07-17T15:21:42","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T15:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/07\/17\/mapping-the-odyssey-what-you-should-watch-read-and-listen-to-this-week\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T15:21:42","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T15:21:42","slug":"mapping-the-odyssey-what-you-should-watch-read-and-listen-to-this-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/07\/17\/mapping-the-odyssey-what-you-should-watch-read-and-listen-to-this-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Mapping the Odyssey \u2013 what you should watch, read and listen to this week"},"content":{"rendered":"

I first read the Odyssey<\/a><\/strong> at university. I was surprised by how much I loved it considering how old and how blokey it was (blood, war, boys being boys) \u2013 not to mention the fact it is 12,109 lines of epic poetry.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a story about coming home (too soon?<\/a>), following Odysseus and his men as they try to get back to the island of Ithaca after the Trojan War. Credited to Homer, the tale features men, monsters and gods. At around 3,000 years old, it remains a ripping yarn that many have tried their hand at adapting or expanding. <\/p>\n

The Penelopiad<\/a> by Margaret Atwood stays true to the epic poetry form while giving voice and agency to Odysseus\u2019s long-suffering wife Penelope and her chorus of maidens as they wait on Ithaca for him to return.<\/p>\n

Circe<\/a> by Madeleine Miller is another brilliant book in the same ilk that expands the tale of the goddess who becomes Odysseus\u2019s lover and guide home. More recently, Ralph Fiennes skilfully turned his hand to playing a fittingly sinewy Odysseus (he\u2019s a ripped warrior but he is nearly 50 and has been away from proper food for a while) in The Return<\/a>, which focuses on the climactic conclusion to Homer\u2019s epic tale. <\/p>\n

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Director Christopher Nolan has now taken on the epic and is receiving rave reviews. I will be seeing it this weekend for sure and am ready to be blown away by what critics are calling a masterpiece that harks back to the epics of old Hollywood.<\/p>\n

While you can expect myth and magic with a story that sees gods changing the winds, cyclops attacks and men becoming pigs, the land and sea across which Odysseus sails is real. In this piece, Pragya Agarawal, explores how ancient geographers and modern researchers have traced Odysseus\u2019s travels. As she notes, the journey home is what grounds this tale and this piece has got me very excited to see how Nolan has depicted that. <\/p>\n

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\n Read more:
\n Can we map The Odyssey? How ancient geographers and modern researchers have traced Odysseus\u2019s travels<\/a>
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Family expectations<\/h2>\n

Pragya is an expert not just in the history of cartography, but also in gender inequality, feminism, racism and reproductive justice. So when I heard about a novel centred on a woman discovering that marriage, motherhood and doing everything \u201cright\u201d hadn\u2019t brought the life she expected, I knew I wanted Pragya to review it.<\/p>\n

First House opens with its unnamed narrator being told by her husband that he wants a divorce. She can\u2019t believe it: marriage is hard, she tells herself, but you endure it \u2013 that\u2019s what her parents did. As Avni Doshi\u2019s protagonist falls apart and rebuilds herself, the identity she\u2019d worked so hard to create dissolves, forcing her to confront the possibility that the life she\u2019d been praised for wasn\u2019t the one she truly wanted.<\/p>\n

First House explores the pressures of culture, family, society and personal myth-making, asking what we deny ourselves by clinging to expectations and inherited ideas of success. Is it possible not to want children even if you have them? What is marriage for? I devoured this book, and Pragya found it a refreshing, deeply contemporary feminist tale.<\/p>\n

First House<\/a> by Avni Doshi is out now<\/em><\/p>\n

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\n Read more:
\n First House: a visceral story about the collapse of a \u2018perfect\u2019 life and the imagining of a new one<\/a>
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Another story about family ties and inherited debts, is Shannon Sanders\u2019 debut novel The Great Wherever. After inheriting a share of her family\u2019s Tennessee farm, Aubrey travels south hoping to solve her financial problems. What she finds is her inheritance is highly contested and within its walls lies generations of family secrets, watched over by the ghosts of her ancestors. The house was bought by her great-grandfather, one of the first Black landowners in the community, and sits on the land on which her family was once enslaved. <\/p>\n

Spanning decades of Black American history, The Great Wherever is a sweeping story about land, inheritance, race and generational wealth, asking how much we owe the past. In this piece, expert in American literature Sharon Monteith explores how the novel uses the voices of ancestors to illuminate the history of African American dispossession, inheritance and resilience. The result is a moving reflection on memory, legacy and the enduring importance of land in Black American history. <\/p>\n

The Great Wherever by Shannon Sanders is out now<\/em><\/p>\n

Marie Maitland<\/h2>\n

Most people know Anne Lister as \u201cGentleman Jack\u201d and regard her as the \u201cfirst modern lesbian\u201d. However, centuries earlier another remarkable woman was writing about love between women. <\/p>\n

Marie Maitland, a 16th-century Scottish gentlewoman, was an unmarried, well-educated and financially independent. For centuries, she has been acknowledged as the author of the Maitland Quarto manuscript, which is a significant collection of poetry in Scots from 1586. <\/p>\n

Poem 49 in the manuscript is a lyrical exploration of one woman\u2019s romantic desire for another. It is this poem that sits at the heart of historian and translator Ashley Douglas\u2019s new book, With My Own Hand: The Secret Life of Marie Maitland, Scotland\u2019s Sixteenth Century Sappho<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Drawing on a host of recently discovered historical records, the book tells the fascinating story of Maitland and her manuscript in the hopes of placing her back into history. As our reviewer, English scholar Dianne Watt writes, the book is a \u201cthoughtful and often speculative reconstruction of this early modern woman\u2019s queer life\u201d.<\/p>\n

With My Own Hand: The Secret Life of Marie Maitland, Scotland\u2019s Sixteenth Century Sappho<\/a> by Asheley Douglas is out now<\/em><\/p>\n

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\n Read more:
\n The 16th-century lesbian poet who could be Scotland\u2019s answer to Gentleman Jack<\/a>
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While getting my hair cut this week I noticed that for the hour or so I had been in the chair the same artist had been on repeat on the speakers. My toes were tapping beneath the sweeping salon cape and I had to ask who it was. To my surprise it was Madonna. Yes, Madge is back and she is once again putting out bangers.<\/p>\n

Confessions II<\/a><\/strong> is a return to the dancefloor, but it\u2019s not just full of earworms with surface-level lyrics about hedonism. Our reviewer argues that beneath the house beats and club nostalgia lies Madonna\u2019s most vulnerable songwriting yet, with lyrics reflecting on grief, family, ageing and past relationships. Rather than simply revisiting an old sound, Confessions II reveals an artist willing to confront her own fallibility while reaffirming her place as one of pop\u2019s great innovators.<\/p>\n

Confessions II is out now<\/em><\/p>\n

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\n Read more:
\n Confessions II: a euphoric return to form that reveals a more vulnerable Madonna<\/a>
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\n <\/em>\n<\/p>\n

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\"The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first read the Odyssey at university. I was surprised by how much I loved it considering how old and how blokey it was (blood, war, boys being boys) \u2013 not to mention the fact it is 12,109 lines of epic poetry. It\u2019s a story about coming home (too soon?), following Odysseus and his men […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}