Set on the author's native Aegean island of Skiathos, these twelve stories capture the folkways of Greece. With acute observation of daily activities and loving descriptions of land and sea, Papadiamantis portrays the beauty and harshness of traditional island life. His prose captivates a reader with its rich combination of realism and symbolism, sensuality and mysticism, insularity and universality. Written near the turn of the century, these works speak today in ways both remarkable and familiar.

Tales from a Greek Island

Literature & Fiction

Papadiamantis, Alexandros

Contemporary

Johns Hopkins University Press

Depressed by the hopelessness of women's lives, Jannis Frankissa, an elderly Greek woman, is driven to murder young girls

Murderess (English and Greek Edition)

W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.

Depressed by the hopelessness of women's lives, Jannis Frankissa, an elderly Greek woman, is driven to murder young girls

The Murderess (English and Greek Edition)

Natl Book Network

A vivid account of the passionate pursuit of love, conquest, and revenge, The Merchants of Nations (1882) brought popular success to Alexandros Papadiamantis years before he would achieve critical acclaim with his short stories. Revered as the “Dostoyevsky of Greece” and the “Saint of Greek literature”, Papadiamantis delivers his characteristic irony and deep insight into the human psyche with this work of historical fiction. Set amid the collapsing world of the late Byzantine Empire, the novel describes how the lives of devout Aegean islanders are upended when they are caught in the wake of ruthless medieval crusaders. This timely translation by Michail Tzoufras of one of Greece’s greatest modern writers is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of Greece’s place in Europe—a still-relevant issue given the nation’s current economic and political crisis.

The Merchants of Nations

Genre Fiction

Sunstep Publishing

The Murderess is a bone-chilling tale of crime and punishment with the dark beauty of a backwoods ballad. Set on the dirt-poor Aegean island of Skiathos, it is the story of Hadoula, an old woman living on the margins of society and at the outer limits of respectability. Hadoula knows about herbs and their hidden properties, and women come to her when they need help. She knows women’s secrets and she knows the misery of their lives, and as the book begins, she is trying to stop her new-born granddaughter from crying so that her daughter can at last get a little sleep. She rocks the baby and rocks her and then the terrible truth hits her: there’s nothing worse than being born a woman, and there’s something that she, Hadoula, can do about that. Peter Levi’s matchless translation of Alexandros Papadiamantis’s astonishing novella captures the excitement and haunting poetry of the original Greek.

The Murderess (New York Review Books Classics)

United States

NYRB Classics

A skilled healer, both a widow and a mother, decides to free several families of their young or newborn daughters because, according to her, they will only be a burden on their families in the midst of the misery that surrounds them in the Greek Isles. A hell full of nightmares and hallucinations will haunt a desperate conscience in the midst of a beautiful landscape, a conscience that can barely overcome the greatest obstacles that a life of extreme reality throws its way. This story is a treatise on the human soul, on its ability to overcome the weight of a miserable and oppressed reality, transfixed by the agony of living and by the impossibility of any justice at all, neither divine nor human. Una hábil curandera, viuda y madre, decide librar a varias familias de sus hijas pequeñas o recién nacidas, pues éstas, según ella misma, serán sólo una carga en medio de la miseria que los rodea en las islas griegas. Un infierno de pesadillas insomnes, sonámbulas y alucinadas atenazará a una conciencia desesperada en medio del hermosísimo paisaje, una conciencia que apenas puede sobreponerse a las pulsiones más graves que una realidad extrema arroja sobre la existencia. Esta historia es un tratado sobre el ser humano, sobre su capacidad para superar el peso de una realidad miserable y oprimida, transido por la angustia de existir y por la imposibilidad de ninguna justicia, divina o humana.

La asesina (Largo recorrido) (Spanish Edition)

Literary

Editorial Periferica

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