The Five-Minute Iliad and Other Compacted Classics

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Wanting to re-read those literary classics that first thrilled you when you were young but just don’t have time in this rush-rush world? Even on vacation, you just can’t get back in to Middlemarch because you gotta amuse the kids or gotta meet that colleague from the office?

Never fear — the five-Minute Iliad is here. Humorist Greg Nagan goes beyond the world of Cliff notes to deliver literary classics that take five minutes or less to read — and that’s a guarantee.

Of course, some breakthrough methods are required to fit epic literature into that five minute slot — for instance, Dante’s Inferno as a series of limericks instead of the terza rima cantos which you may have had to suffer through in college. And Joyce’s Ulysses — famous for its several page long unpunctuated sentences — is reduced to a single seven word sentence.
(Hosted by Michael Goldfarb)

Guests:

Greg Nagan, author of The Five-Minute Iliad and Other Instant Classics.