Generally recognized as one of the foremost Greek prose writers of the modern period, Alexandros Papadiamandis holds a special place in the history of modern Greek letters, but also in the heart of the ordinary Greek reader. Fey Folk is characteristic of Papadiamandis's work. Its characters are quaint, simple-hearted folk living their humble lives in accordance with centuries-old traditions and customs, delightfully described by Papadiamandis with both reverence and humour. The setting is the hinterland of his native island of Skiathos with its intoxicating vegetation, its hillsides, springs and ravines, where the belief in spirits and the supernatural is deeply rooted in the consciousness of the otherwise God-fearing and devout inhabitants. The 'saint' of modern Greek letters... Papadiamandis wrote with graphic realism and unequalled passion. - Times Literary Supplement The greatest Modern Greek prose writer. - Milan Kundera

Fey Folk: A Tale from Skiathos

Literature & Fiction

Alexandros Papadiamandis

Literary

Aiora Books

Cavafy is by far the most translated and most well-known Greek poet internationally. His work exists in multiple translations in a wide range of languages and major 20th-century poets as diverse as Auden, Brecht, Brodsky, Durrell, Milosz and Montale have all paid tribute to Cavafy, either by writing poems "in the style of Cavafy", or by openly admitting their debt to his poetry in their own work. Whether his subject matter is historical, philosophical or sensual, Cavafy's unique poetic voice is always recognizable by its ironical, suave, witty, world-weary and aesthetic tones. It is a voice which lends itself to translation. Indeed, translations of Cavafy's poetry are the best possible counter to the often quoted platitude that poetry is what is lost in translation. Cavafy's is a poetry that not only survives but actually thrives in translation.

Selected Poems (Creek and English Edition)

Constantine P. Cavafy

Poetry

Georgios Vizyenos (1849-1896) is one of Greece’s best-loved writers. His stories, written in 1883-4, are set in his native Thrace, a corner of Europe where Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey meet. Each title poses an enigma: Where did Yorgis’ grandfather travel on his only journey? What was Yorgis’ mother’s sin? Who was responsible for his brother’s murder? At the end of each story the narrator possesses some knowledge that forces him – and his readers – to revise their earlier assumptions, which were based on incomplete knowledge. Because Vizyenos wants us to experience the difficult transition from ignorance to knowledge, he leaves us in suspense until the very end. Vizyenos’ stories evoke a time when individual Greeks and Turks could share each other’s joys and pains despite the hostile relations between their governments.

Thracian Tales

Georgios Vizyenos

Georgios Vizyenos is one of Greece's best-loved writers. "Moskov Selim" is set in Thrace, a corner of Europe where Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria meet. Selim is a Muslim name, yet "Moskov" implies that he is a Russian. Vizyenos' fascinating and moving story is set during a time of constant wars between Russians and Turks whose outcome would decide the future of south-east Europe: Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria were becoming independent of the Ottoman empire, while Greece was to gain huge territories at the empire's expense. Although Istanbul would remain in Turkey, it would no longer be the seat of the Ottoman Sultan, who, as caliph, was the leader of the world's Muslims. Vizyenos' story evokes a time when Greeks and Turks could share each other's joys and pains despite the hostile relations between their governments. Listening to the protagonist's life story, the narrator of "Moskov Selim" discovers that this Turk is a kindred spirit, despite the gulf of nationality and religion that separates them. "Vizyenos brings into question the nature of identity and of reality as constructed by reason and senses". Roderick Beaton Director, Centre of Hellenic Studies, King's College London

Moskov Selim

Andreas Laskaratos (1811-1901), a prominent figure in modern Greek letters, was a writer and poet, a social thinker and, in many ways, a controversialist. A life-long enemy of hypocrisy wherever he found it, on many occasions he turned against politicians, while he ceaselessly fought against corruption and religious prejudice and fanaticism. Much of his writing is savagely satirical, but his Reflections set out calmly, clearly and wittily his uncompromising and finely reasoned beliefs. As the essence of his thought they could be read with profit by present-day politicians and teachers of any nationality, and indeed by everybody with an interest in social and moral questions.

Selected Poems

Nikiforos Vrettakos

Reflections

Andreas Laskaratos

History & Criticism

Often compared during his lifetime to T.S. Eliot, whose work he translated and introduced to Greece, George Seferis is noted for his spare, laconic, dense and allusive verse in the Modernist idiom of the first half of the twentieth century. At once intensely Greek and a cosmopolitan of his time (he was a career-diplomat as well as a poet), Seferis better than any other writer expresses the dilemma experienced by his countrymen then and now: how to be at once Greek and modern. The translations that make up this volume are the fruit of more than forty years, and many are published here for the first time.

Novel and Other Poems (Greek Edition)

George Seferis

The poetry of Odysseus Elytis owes as much to the ancients and Byzantium, as to the surrealists of the 1930s and the architecture of the Cyclades, bringing romantic modernism and structural experimentation to Greece. Collected here are the two speeches Elytis gave on his acceptance of the 1979 Nobel Prize for Literature, which are still strikingly relevant today. He addresses a hypertrophic and atrophic Europe in moral chaos, with as many coexisting values as languages-and to this he offers the "common language" that is found in poetry, in art, and in their base materials of sense, aesthetic, intuition. Ultimately, his is a powerful ode to beauty amid utilitarianism, and the need for poetry as "the art of approaching that which surpasses us" and "puts us at the threshold of the deepest truth". Odysseus Elytis (1911-1996) has been a leading figure in the "Generation of the 1930s", whose poets, influenced by surrealism, renewed contemporary Greek poetry. During the post-war years he lived for long periods in France, where he associated with the pioneers of the world's avant-garde (Reverdy, Tzara, Breton, Ungaretti, Matisse, Picasso, Giacometti). He published seventeen collections of poetry, translations from ancient Greek and modern European poets, and two volumes of prose. In 1979 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. "And, lo and behold, here I am today in Stockholm, my only treasure a few Greek words. Humble words but alive, because they are on the lips of a whole people. They are three thousand years old, but as fresh as if just drawn from the sea, from the pebbles and sea-weed of an Aegean shore: from the deep blue and total transparency of the aether". From Odysseus Elytis' speech at the Nobel Banquet City Hall, Stockholm, December 10, 1979

In the Name of Luminosity and Transparency

Odysseus Elytis

A wealthy count on his deathbed, his libertine nephew, an upstanding young clerk, and a scheming notary who stops at nothing to protect his daughter make The Notary an iconic tale of suspense and intrigue, love and murder. The classic work of Alexandros Rangavis, The Notary, a mystery set on the island of Cephalonia on the eve of the Greek Revolution of 1821, is Modern Greek literature's contribution to the tradition of early crime fiction, alongside E.T.A. Hoffman, Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins. Alexandros Rizos Rangavis (1809-1892) was a Greek man of letters, poet and statesman. Born in Constantinople in 1809 to a Greek Phanariot family, he was raised in Bucharest and Odessa, and attended military school in Munich. Following his return to Greece, Rangavis served at the Ministry of Education, helped organize the founding of the first university of modern Greece in 1834 and was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1856. Rangavis is the author of the first History of Modern Greek Literature (1877). He also wrote numerous plays and novels, and translated Dante, Schiller, Lessing, Goethe and Shakespeare into Greek.

The Notary

Alexandros Rangavis

Words of Wisdom from Ancient Greece gathers the best of a thousand years of philosophy, history and literature, in a compilation of writing spanning from 800 BC to 200 AD. With selections from the five major schools of Greek thought—the Platonists, the Aristotelians, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the Skeptics—this survey of ancient wisdom offers guidance for a life well lived from luminaries of Greece’s legendary past. AESCHYLUS - AESOP ALEXANDER THE GREAT ANAXAGORAS - ANTISTHENES ARISTOTLE - ARISTOPHANES BIAS OF PRIENE CHILON OF SPARTA CLEOBULUS OF LINDOS DEMOCRITUS - DEMOSTHENES DIOGENES - EPICURUS EPICTETUS - EURIPIDES HERACLITUS - HESIOD HIPPOCRATES - HOMER ISOCRATES - MENANDER PERIANDER - PINDAR PITTACUS OF MYTILENE PLATO - PLUTARCH PROTAGORAS - PYTHAGORAS SOCRATES - SOLON - SOPHOCLES THALES OF MILETUS THEOCRITUS - THUCYDIDES XENOPHON - ZENO OF CITIUM

Words of Wisdom from Ancient Greece

Politics & Social Sciences

Alexander Zaphiriou

Philosophy

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