The stories of the Trojan war and Helen of Troy, Patrolcus and Achilles, the Sirens and the Cyclops are embedded in western culture, yet readers often fail to recognise that they were made famous by two epic poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey, and one blind poet: Homer.

Starting with their inception in ancient Greece, Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey demonstrates these poems reverberate through the western canon, from the Rome of Virgil and Horace to Joyce's Dublin and Derek Walcott's Carribean, via Dante and Racine. In this lyrical and graceful book, Alberto Manguel delights in the original poems and celebrates their presence throughout history.