The first clash of the armies in Logue s Heroic . . . brilliant version of Homer s Iliad (The New York Times Book Review) Setting down her topaz saucer heaped with nectarine jelly, Emptying her blood-red mouth" set in her ice-white face" Teenaged Athena jumped up and shrieked: Kill! Kill for me! Better to die than live without killing! Who says prayer does no good? Christopher Logue s work in progress, his Iliad, has been called the best translation of Homer since Pope s (The New York Review of Books). Here in All Day Permanent Red is doomed Hector, the lion, slam-scattering the herd at the height of his powers. Here is the Greek army rising with a sound like a sky-wide Venetian blind. Here is an arrow s tunnel, the width of a lipstick, through a neck. Like Homer himself, Logue is quick to mix the ancient and the new, because his Troy exists outside time, and no translator has a more Homeric interest in the truth of battle, or in the absurdity and sublimity of war.

"The latest in Logue's long and powerful retelling of the Iliad, this book recounts the story of 'the first battle scenes of Homer's Iliad.' It is not at all a translation, as Uzi submachine guns and the Nazi-Soviet battle of Kursk have a role here; but it does succeed in capturing something of the terror and ferocity of combat that occupies the Iliad better than any translation could do. It is terrifying, it is relentless, and (one imagines) like combat itself, it is at times almost entirely unintelligible, shards of experiences slammed up against one another with no attempt made to render them intelligible as a whole. Like combat itself (again, one imagines), it is the waiting before the fight, and the pauses within it, that actually convey the most terror—the still, calm deliberation of men setting out to kill or die trying. War is not going away in our world, and Logue's version of the Iliad could well become a guidepost for our own age—thus reaffirming, paradoxically in part by violation, both the particularity and universality of Homer's epic." Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)

"Like Anne Carson's updatings of myth, Logue's Homer is less a translation than a channeling, articulating its essences through terms like "a tunnel the width of a lipstick," "blood like a car wash" and "teenaged Athena." Logue (Prince Charming: A Memoir) strikes a terrific balance between poetic elevation and abject stupidity, conveying at once the terrible power and terrible banality of violence." Publishers Weekly

Christopher Logue's work in progress, his Iliad, has been called "the best translation of Homer since Pope's" (The New York Review of Books). Here in All Day Permanent Red is doomed Hector, the lion, "slam-scattering the herd" at the height of his powers. Here is the Greek army rising with a sound like a "sky-wide Venetian blind." Here is an arrow's tunnel, "the width of a lipstick, " through a neck. Like Homer himself, Logue is quick to mix the ancient and the new, because his Troy exists outside time, and no translator has a more Homeric interest in the truth of battle, or in the absurdity and sublimity of war.