Homer's Iliad describes the events of the siege of Ilium, or Troy. It is an epic poem that most people have heard of but comparatively few have read, even in translation. Troy: Homer's Iliad Retold takes a fresh look at this timeless tale of heroes and gods, love and war, personal honor and lust for glory.

An introduction by Michael J. Anderson explores the focus and scope of the Iliad. Divided into 24 books, the story takes place in the last year of the legendary war fought between the Greeks and the Trojans. It focuses on the famous Greek hero Achilles, dramatizing his insatiable rage at the universe and the fact that he is half-god, half-mortal, and doomed to die young. The book follows the structure of the original poem in clear narrative prose, punctuated with selected straight-from-the-poet's-mouth quotations. There is also background information on the Greeks, Trojans, and Olympian gods, and historic details of the Trojan Wars.

Michael J. Anderson, the general editor, is an associate professor in the Classics Department at Yale University. He has degrees from Princeton and Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and has been teaching at Yale since 1997. One of his special interests is Archaic Greek epic, and he is the author of The Fall of Troy in Early Greek Poetry and Art(Oxford, 1997).

David Boyle is a writer specializing in history, economics, and social change. He is the author of Authenticity: Brands, Fakes, Spin and the Lust for Real Life (Flamingo, 2004) and a range of other titles.

Viv Croot is a writer with a particular interest in popularizing specialist subjects. Her fascination with the literature of classical Greece focuses on the Iliad and the Odyssey, and their influence on the Western literary tradition.