Daniel Mendelsohn was born in New York City in 1960 and educated at the University of Virginia, where he received his B.A. in Classics in 1982, and at Princeton, where he earned his Ph.D. in Classics in 1994. His eleven books include the memoir "The Fugitive Embrace" (1999), named a best book of the year by the Los Angeles Times; the international bestsellers "An Odyssey: Un père, un fils, une épopée" (2017) and "Les disparus" (2006); a two-volume, annotated translation of the modern Greek poet Constantin Cavafy (2009); and three collections of essays, including one translated into French ("Si beau, si fragile", Flammarion, 2011), most recently "Ecstasy and Terror: From the Greeks to Game of Thrones" (2018). His latest literary work, "Three Rings: A Tale of Exiles" (2020), was named Kirkus Best Book of the Year, Literary Hub's Coup de Coeur and Best Foreign Book in France. In spring 2025, his translation (from the American) of Homer's Odyssey was published by the University of Chicago Press.
Over the past thirty-five years, Daniel Mendelsohn has published over three hundred essays, reviews, articles and translations in numerous American magazines, including The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, where he is part of the editorial trio. He has also been a columnist for The New York Times Book Review, New York Magazine and BBC Culture. His writings for the mainstream press cover a wide range of subjects, from classical civilization to contemporary literature, film, theater, opera and television. Mr. Mendelsohn's honors include the National Jewish Book Award (USA), the National Book Critics' Circle Award (USA), the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Prose Style, the President's Medal of the Society for Classical Studies (USA), the James Madison Medal of Princeton University (USA), the Médicis, Méditerranée and Transfuge prizes in France, and the Premio Malaparte in Italy, the highest Italian literary distinction for foreign authors. In 2022, he was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Republic.
Daniel Mendelsohn, who is also director of the Robert B. Silvers Foundation Silvers Foundation, a charity supporting non-fiction authors, teaches literature at Bard College. He lives in the Hudson Valley, New York, and in Normandy.
