Seamus Heaney

Beowulf

A New Verse Translation

Bilingual Edition

The national bestseller; winner of the Whitbread Award. "A faithful rendering that is simultaneously an original and gripping poem in its own right."—New York Times Book Review

Composed toward the end of the first millennium, Beowulf is the classic Northern epic of a hero’s triumphs as a young warrior and his fated death as a defender of his people.

The poem is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and then having to live on, physically and psychically exposed in the exhausted aftermath. It is not hard to draw parallels in this story to the historical curve of consciousness in the twentieth century, but the poem also transcends such considerations, telling us psychological and spiritual truths that are permanent and liberating.

In his new translation, Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney has produced a work that is both true, line by line, to the original poem and a fundamental expression of his own creative gift.

"[Heaney is] the one living poet who can rightfully claim to be the Beowulf poet’s heir."—Edward Mendelson, New York Times Book Review