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Interviews | October 6, 2009

The Powells.com Interview with Margaret Atwood

0 comments By Jill Owens

In her 2003 novel Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood describes a future after humanity had been almost entirely wiped out by a plague. Jimmy, aka Snowman, lives... Continue »

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1. 
   $18.86 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

   The Year of the Flood

   Margaret Atwood

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Yonathan, March 18, 2009

In this translation of Beowulf, the story is the star. I've read other translated editions, but gotten so bogged down in the attempts at exact translation (those tiresome hyphenations!) that I never noticed Beowulf himself. Here, we see him develop as a character: first a young hero, then a king, then a seasoned ruler with one last fight to face.
And everything means something. Heaney mentions in his introduction that he wanted every word to have weight; he's succeeded.

The introduction alone, incidentally, is worth the price of the book. Reading how Heaney sees poetry and the English language is a privilege; he's one of our best living poets. Also, though I don't read Old English, I did appreciate the bilingual edition, just for reference's sake.

I highly recommend this edition. Whether the reader is new to the poem or not, it's fresh and meaningful here.

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