The cave of the cyclops

In May 2005 Penguin will publish 70 unique titles to celebrate the company's 70th birthday.

The titles in the Pocket Penguins series are emblematic of the renowned breadth and quality of the Penguin list and will hark back to Penguin founder Allen Lane's vision of 'good books for all'. Homer's Odyssey is a founding tale of Western civilization: an epic story of one man's struggle to return home from the Trojan war.

It became the first Penguin Classic when E.V. Rieu's translation was published in 1946. In this extract, Odysseus describes some of the horrors and wonders of his journey, including imprisonment by the fearsome Cyclops and his travels to the land of the dead.