‘Bold … Electrifying.’
Ron Charles, The Washington Post
‘[L]ively and vigorous … I am delighted. I’ve never read a Beowulf that felt so immediate and so alive … It’s profane and funny and modern and archaic all at once, and its loose and unstructured verses are full of twisting, surprising kennings.’
Constance Grady, Vox
‘The author of the crazy-cool Beowulf-inspired novel The Mere Wife tackles the Old English epic poem with a fierce new feminist translation that radically recontextualises the tale.’
Barbara VanDenburgh, USA Today
‘Of the four translations I’ve read, Headley’s is the most readable and engaging. She combines a modern poetry style with some of the hallmarks of Old English poetry, and the words practically sing off the page … Headley’s translation shows why it’s vital to have women and people from diverse backgrounds translate texts.’
Margaret Kingsbury, Buzzfeed
‘Headley brings a directness, intensity, and rhythm to her translation that I haven’t seen before. This is what it must have felt like to sit in a mead hall and listen to a scop tell the tale. Other translations may be more scholarly, literal, or true to the poetic form of the original, but it’s been a thousand years since Beowulf was this accessible or exciting.’
Steve Thomas, The Fantasy Hive
‘Headley’s Beowulf is kindred in spirit to The Mere Wife— highly conscious of gender and modernised to the hilt — but totally different in form. Instead of changing names or places, Headley sticks closely to the original Old English text while updating the vocabulary with flourishes of internet humour … The feminism in Headley’s translation is embedded in the texture and language of the poem itself rather than in its individual events or characters … Her Beowulf is a tragicomic epic about the things men do to impress one another. It’s as fierce an examination of masculine weakness as The Mere Wife was of feminine strength.’
Jo Livingstone, Poetry Foundation
‘[A]s a poetic meditation on the poem, it’s full of startlingly powerful and often raucously lovely language.’
Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Review
‘Maria Dahvana Headley has made an enthralling, scalding, contemporary epic; she combines newly-wrought ancient kennings with US street slang and lights up the women in the poem with unusual sympathy.’
Marina Warner, New Statesman 'Books of the Year'
‘Maria Dahvana Headley’s decision to make Beowulf a bro puts his macho bluster in a whole new light.’
Andrea Kannapell, The New York Times
‘Beowulf is an ancient tale of men battling monsters, but Headley has made it wholly modern, with language as piercing and relevant as Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning album DAMN. With scintillating inversions and her use of au courant idiom — the poem begins with the word ‘Bro!’ and Queen Wealhtheow is ‘hashtag: blessed’ — Headley asks one to consider not only present conflicts in light of those of the past, but also the line between human and inhuman, power and powerlessness, and the very nature of moral transformation, the ‘suspicion that at any moment a person might shift from hero into howling wretch.’ The women of Beowulf have often been sidelined. Not so here.’
Danielle Trussoni, The New York Times Book Review
‘The new Beowulf is incredibly exciting from beginning to end!’
Jason Furman, Harvard University
‘The new translation of Beowulf by Maria Dahavana Headley is the best thing I've read all fucking year.’
Mike Drucker, TV Writer and Comedian
‘Finally, a Beowulf translation that leaves us feeling ‘hashtag: blessed’.’
Alena Smith, SLATE/Future Tense virtual event
‘Maria Dahavana Headley’s breathtakingly audacious and idiomatically rich Beowulf: a new translation is a breath of iconoclastically fresh air blowing through the old tale's stuffy mead-hall atmosphere.’
Mike Scroggins, Hyperallergic
‘Beowulf: a new translation pulls Beowulf into the fraught discourse on masculinity in the 21st century … Headley’s choice of backward-hatterd beer-soaked vernacular has its origins in the grandstanding language of the hero as we've always known him — a beefcake who wants to pull off such incredible feats that dudes will hype his reputation for centuries to come.’
Miles Klee, MEL Magazine
‘Joy. That is the primary emotion I felt as I was reading Maria Dahvana Headley’s new translation of Beowulf… I cannot recommend this translation more highly. It is accessible to the reader who has never encountered Beowulf before, yet it intrigues and challenges those who study the poem professionally.’
David Wilton, WordOrigins.org
‘The sheer poetry lifts the reader into a realm that is both familiar and even enlivening.’ FOUR STARS
Carpe Librum
‘Now science fantasy writer, Maria Dahvana Headley has cut through with a punk sensibility. Hers is a culturally radical reading with a feminist edge and it opens a pathway to a deeper historical reading.’
Barry Healy, Green Left
‘Compelling and persuasive … Maria Dahvana Headley’s new translation is bold, exciting and breathes new life into an old classic. With a more nuanced approach to some characters and some inspired language choices, Headley helps Beowulf reclaim its rightful place as a raucous and boozy crowd pleaser.’ FOUR STARS
Simon Clark, The AU Review
‘This latest reimagining of the epic is through the feminist lens of Maria Dahvana Headley. Bringing this ancient text up to date is no mean feat; Headley does it with flair, fury, and fresh relatability.’
Happy Magazine
‘This is a version that is highly recommended, not so much to ensure you’re up with your classic education, but rather, for the sheer pleasure of the story and its execution … There’s nothing quite like reading the book.’
Magdalena Ball, Compulsive Reader
‘In the wake of Seamus Heaney’s energetic and masterly translation 20 years ago, it took a brave writer to attempt a radically different one. But Headley’s engaging introduction to her almost rap-like version shows up many of the places where a translation can slant the original this way or that, and uses her own life and times as a starting point.’
Kerryn Goldsworthy, Sydney Morning Herald
‘[A] bold and fabulous feminist translation … This Beowulf is a joy to read: Headley has loosened herself from the shackles of stuffy scholarship and archaic language (although do not be fooled – she is adept at understanding her source material) to provide a rollicking good yarn.’
Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore, The Saturday Paper
‘[An] incredible feminist interpretation.’
Keeping Up With the Penguins
‘The critical aspect of this translation is that Headley uses language to bring the story vividly to life. Reinterpreting the text enables it to sing off the page, deploying verse and modern interpretations when necessary to recreate Beowulf as a flowing, visceral tale … a joy to read and highly recommended.’
Robert Goodman, Newtown Review of Books
‘It definitely isn’t your grandma’s Beowulf… Hooked from the first word … Headley's combination of alliteration, assonance, and consonance makes for verse that we can’t help but tap our feet and bob our heads to.’
Kwan Ann Tan, Asymptote
Praise for Maria Dahvana Headley:
‘Maria Dahvana Headley is a firecracker: she’s whip-smart with a heart, and she writes like a dream.’
Neil Gaiman
Praise for The Mere Wife:
‘Vivid and thrilling.’
The Daily Telegraph
Praise for The Mere Wife:
‘There’s not a false note in this retelling, which does the Beowulf poet and his spear-Danes proud.’ STARRED REVIEW
Kirkus
