Description: In this outstanding new translation, commissioned by Ireland's renowned Abbey Theatre to commemorate its centenary, Seamus Heaney exposes the darkness and the humanity in Sophocles' masterpiece, and inks it with his own modern and masterly touch.
Brief description: Sophocles (496-406 BC) was one of the three great tragic playwrights of ancient Greece; he wrote 123 plays during a career of 60 years and was still writing at the age of 90. Only seven tragedies survive, of which the most famous is Oedipus Rex.
Review Quotes: "Heaney has created something imperishable and great that is stainless--stainless, because its force as poetry makes it untouchable by the claw of literalism: it lives singly, as an English language poem." --James Wood, The Guardian on Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf