Daniel Mendelsohn is an internationally bestselling author, translator, and award-winning critic who is currently Editor-at-Large of the New York Review of Books. With a PhD in Classics from Princeton, Daniel is renowned for his interpretations of Greek and Roman classics for mainstream audiences. He has authored 11 books, including the bestselling memoir, An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic, which recounts his travels around the Mediterranean with his late father while reading Homer’s Odyssey. His book about relatives who perished in the Holocaust, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, won the National Jewish Book Award and was featured in Ken Burns’ 2022 documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust.
His translation of the complete works of the Alexandrian Greek poet C. P. Cavafy—the first English translation to include the poet’s “Unfinished Poems”—was named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year. In April 2025, Mr. Mendelsohn will publish a new translation of Homer’s Odyssey. Among his many other honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the George Jean Nathan Prize for Drama Criticism, Italy’s Malaparte Prize, and the Prix Médicis and Prix Méditerranée in France. The French government named him a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2022. Daniel lives in the Hudson Valley and teaches literature at Bard College.
Language spoken: English
Photo credit: Matt Mendelsohn