Beowulf ― A New Translation

A new, feminist translation of Beowulf by the author of the much-buzzed-about novel The Mere Wife

Nearly twenty years after Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf—and fifty years after the translation that continues to torment high-school students around the world—there is a radical new verse translation of the epic poem by Maria Dahvana Headley, which brings to light elements that have never before been translated into English, recontextualizing the binary narrative of monsters and heroes into a tale in which the two categories often entwine, justice is rarely served, and dragons live among us.

A man seeks to prove himself as a hero. A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. The familiar elements of the epic poem are seen with a novelist’s eye toward gender, genre, and history—Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment, powerful men seeking to become more powerful, and one woman seeking justice for her child, but this version brings new context to an old story. While crafting her contemporary adaptation of Beowulf, Headley unearthed significant shifts lost over centuries of translation. This is a translation for the twenty-first century, to be released in 2019 alongside the paperback of Headley’s novel The Mere Wife.

Maria Dahvana Headley is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and editor. Her books include the novels The Mere Wife, Magonia, Aerie, and Queen of Kings, and the memoir The Year of Yes. With Kat Howard, she is the author of The End of the Sentence, and with Neil Gaiman, she is the coeditor of Unnatural Creatures. Her stories have been short-listed for the Shirley Jackson, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, and her work has been supported by the MacDowell Colony and by Arte Studio Ginestrelle, where the first draft of Beowulfwas written. She was raised with a wolf and a pack of sled dogs in the high desert of rural Idaho and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.