A chronicle of the life of Homer's Odysseus by a classicist with a wry sense of humor. Robert Fagles, translator of The Iliad and The Odyssey, called it conversational and eloquent, racy and reflective, which is pretty high praise. Beye draws on recent scholarship, literature and archaeology in constructing a fictional modern portrait of the cunning wanderer. Beye, though a classics professor, doesn't shy from exploits, sexual and otherwise, of our hero.  (GRE191, $13.95)