Ancient Greece — If the Odyssey is about the journey home, the Iliad is about what makes home worth fighting for — and whether the fighting destroys everything worth preserving. This is the war poem that set the template for every story about glory and grief that followed.

The poem covers just a few weeks in the tenth year of the Trojan War, but the scope is cosmic. Achilles' wrath drives the plot, but Hector — doomed, dutiful, human — is the one who breaks your heart. Fagles delivers a translation with genuine momentum, and the final books are as devastating as anything in literature.

"With a single word — rage — Western literature begins."

Read this before or after the Odyssey. The pairing is the foundation of everything.