Beowulf 
a new translation

A GUARDIAN, NEW STATESMAN, SPECTATOR, AND IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEARA new, feminist translation of Beowulf by the author of The Mere Wife Nearly twenty years after Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf – and fifty years after the translation that continues to torment high-school students around the world – there is a a radical new verse interpretation of the epic poem by Maria Dahvana Headley, which brings to light elements never before translated into English.A man seeks to prove himself as a hero. A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. These familiar components of the epic poem are seen with a novelist’s eye towards gender, genre, and history. Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment – of powerful men seeking to become more powerful and one woman seeking justice for her child – but this version brings new context to an old story. While crafting her contemporary adaptation, Headley unearthed significant shifts lost over centuries of translation; her Beowulf is one for the twenty-first century.