PHILADELPHIA -- Classics scholar Emily Wilson was in Greece’s Costa Navarino last year when she heard the news that would change her life: Filmmaker Christopher Nolan was planning to release a star-studded adaptation of "The Odyssey," the epic poem that Wilson had spent years painstakingly translating from Homeric Greek into English.

Nolan’s film crew, Wilson learned, had just left the Greek town where she was now staying. As she walked along the beach, the University of Pennsylvania professor imagined what scenes of adventure had been conjured on the ground where she stood.

The seductively scary sirens calling out to Odysseus? The giant Cyclops who eats his men? (Spoiler alert: It was the latter, shot at Nestor’s Cave in nearby Messenia.)

Nolan’s film was a thrilling prospect for the classicist who made her name penning a quick-paced and strikingly contemporary translation of the nearly 2,700-year-old story for modern audiences. While the "Oppenheimer" director wrote his own version for the big screen, along with partner-collaborator Emma Thomas, he has cited several translations, including Wilson’s, as references.

“It’s great that there’s going to be a whole new wave of people who may not have thought much about 'The Odyssey,' may not even be familiar with the narrative, who may then get excited about it, because Christopher Nolan is a big name,” said Wilson, who lives in West Philly with her partner, David Foreman, a Swarthmore College administrator, her two younger daughters, Psyche and Freya, their cats, Pumpkin and Spice, and their dog, Pepper. (Her eldest daughter, Imogen, just graduated from Temple University.)

The Nolan bump is already in effect: "The Odyssey" made $263.7 million globally on opening weekend, and it has been hailed as a total triumph for the filmmaker behind Inception and Interstellar. The cast features Nolan regulars like Matt Damon (Odysseus), Anne Hathaway (Penelope), Robert Pattinson (Antinous), and Elliot Page (Sinon), as well as Tom Holland (Telemachus, son of Odysseus and Penelope), Zendaya (Athena), John Leguizamo (Eumaeus), and Lupita Nyong’o (Helen of Troy/Clytemnestra).

But even before the red carpets and glitzy media tours, Wilson saw a surge of interest in her 2017 translation. Last year saw a significant increase in book sales following the film announcement, and those numbers have continued to rise into 2026, said Louise Brockett, head of communications at W.W. Norton & Co., Wilson’s publisher.

As of July 2 this year, sales have seen an even bigger boost: “In 2026, notably, domestic sales across all formats surpassed 1,000,000 copies,” Brockett wrote in an email.

For Wilson, the overwhelming response has been stunning to witness. Long before "The Odyssey" again seized the zeitgeist, she took on the project with rather low expectations of readership.

“I remember being very much aware that most retranslations maybe sell 1,000 copies if you’re lucky … you’re going to work very, very hard on it for five years, and then maybe a tiny number of people will read it — and of course I thought it was still worthwhile,” said Wilson, who first became enamored with Greek mythology as a child growing up in Oxford, England.