The Odyssey

Myth, Memory, and the Wine-Dark Sea

The Odyssey reimagined through celestial cartography, illuminated ornament, and mythic atmosphere. This collection approaches its characters and encounters as symbolic forces: wisdom, temptation, longing, survival, transformation, memory, and return.

The Odyssey explores the tension between wandering and belonging, knowledge and danger, forgetting and remembrance. It is ultimately a meditation on endurance across distance, time, and the unknowable forces that shape the journey home.

About the book

A symbolic visual interpretation of The Odyssey using celestial maps, mythological archetypes, and illuminated ornament to explore memory, transformation, survival, and the longing for home.

Goddess of wisdom, strategy, and disciplined thought, Athena guides Odysseus through chaos not with force, but with intelligence and restraint. She stands as the quiet architecture behind survival, memory, and return.
Patient, perceptive, and quietly unyielding, Penelope preserves the memory of home while time itself erodes the world around her. Through endurance and intelligence, she becomes the still center toward which the entire journey turns.
A solitary giant living beyond the laws of civilization, Polyphemus represents raw power untouched by empathy or reason. His encounter with Odysseus transforms wandering into punishment and draws the wrath of the sea itself.
Artistic depiction of a ship sailing at sea with decorative elements and 'The Odyssey' text.
Graceful, intelligent, and open-hearted, Nausicaa represents the first true gentleness Odysseus encounters after years of suffering. She stands at the threshold between shipwreck and renewal, exile and homecoming.
Two impossible horrors guarding a narrow passage, Scylla and Charybdis embody the inevitability of sacrifice and the terror of constrained choices. Between them lies the brutal mathematics of survival.

Details

Format
8.5 x 8.5 Hardcover
Purchase
Available by request
Author
Art and text by Paula Phelan
Year
2026
Pages
20 pages