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Greece

The covers of the six books featured in the Watchlist in a 2 x 3 grid: Clean, The Light That Burns...

The Watchlist: October 2024

By Tobias Carroll

Stuck in a reading slump? Check out Tobias Carroll’s recommendations of six new books of fiction, poetry, and graphic lit to read now, translated from Greek, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, and more.

Woodcut image of a male prisoner behind bars on wove paper

"The Prisoner (Der Gefangene), 1918" by Christian Rohlfs (artist) German, 1849 - 1938 in the Gift of Jacob Kainen Collection in the National Gallery of Art

A Censored Poem

By Carol Sansour

Take this city / bite it like an apple

Translated from Arabic by Katharine Halls

MultimediaMultilingual

April 2021 At Journeys End Iceland Life Jackets Feature

At Journey’s End

By Steinunn G. Helgadóttir

This last shift, the boats came in all night and we ran out of everything.

Translated from Icelandic by Larissa Kyzer

Multimedia

Portrait of writer Natalie Bakopoulos

The City and the Writer: In Athens with Natalie Bakopoulos

By Nathalie Handal

I’m always a bit shattered by Athens.

Portrait of writer Christopher Bakken

The City and the Writer: In Thessaloniki with Christopher Bakken

By Nathalie Handal

Dig anywhere in the city and you collide with history.

The City and the Writer: In Athens with Amanda Michalopoulou

By Nathalie Handal

Athens is about instant decisions, constant change, boldness and confusion and nerve.

The Tongue’s Story

By Krisztina Tóth

It’s because we don’t speak their language. That’s why they’re defiling our food.

Translated from Hungarian by Owen Good

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Cock-a-doodle-do

By Pan Bouyoucas

“Why didn’t you tell her about the rooster?”

Translated from French by Éric Fontaine & Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren

Just Dinner, but Oh, What a Feast

By Rohan Kamicheril

Though food may fail to broker communication, this is often one of its major supposed roles.

Not Bread Alone: Food and the Refugees in Greece

By Diana Farr Louis

Whereas shelter and safety must come first, the question of food is so fundamental.

An Endless Green Line

By Gianluca Costantini & Elettra Stamboulis

Every town had two soccer teams. A right-wing one and a left-wing one.

Translated from Italian by Jamie Richards

Comics and Graphic Narratives: A Global Cultural Commons

By Dominic Davies

Comics themselves have a role to play in the construction of a more globally aware social consciousness.

Piece by Piece They’re Taking My World Away

By Christos Ikonomou

I say we go. It can’t be worse than it is here.

Translated from Greek by Karen Emmerich

Tomorrow

By Auguste Corteau

A girl will head toward the taxi stand, dragging a noisy suitcase far too small for her hopes.

Translated from Greek by Karen Emmerich

From “Overdue Loans”

By Petros Markaris

There are riot police trucks blockading the street, not even a mosquito could squeeze by.

Translated from Greek by Karen Emmerich

Woman in Tree

By Amanda Michalopoulou

Today we have with us the woman who toppled the government.

Translated from Greek by Karen Emmerich

Multilingual

Timon vs. Newton

By Christopher Kontonikolis

By Zeus, do you know how to bring owls to Athens!

Translated from Ancient Greek by Andrew Barrett

Multilingual

Timoniad

By Christopher Kontonikolis

Hard as he tried, he could not save himself.

Translated from Ancient Greek by Andrew Barrett

Multilingual

Fragments of Sappho

By Geoff Wisner

and lovely laughing – oh it / puts the heart in my chest on wings

Someone Around Here is Looking for an Equation

By Dimitris Athinakis

My fingernails grow; they reach the ceiling.

Translated from Greek by Karen Emmerich

An Interview with Dimitris Athinakis

By Peter Constantine

There is an interesting trend right now where Cretan teenagers and hipster twentysomethings send each other text messages in fifteen-syllable iambic lines.

Translated from Greek

From “Inside a Girl Like You”

By Angela Dimitrakaki

I’m writing to send you my new address.

Translated from Greek by Karen Emmerich

Half Sleep Half Death

By Nikos Violaris

Half sleep / half death.

Translated from Greek by Peter Constantine

Black Lips

By Jazra Khaleed

Listen / You who chew on my solitude

Translated from Greek by Peter Constantine

Hermes In Retrogression

By Yiannis Moundelas

With fingers—fingertips and edge of nail— / he plots fires with tongues of snakes,

Translated from Greek by Peter Constantine

Call Me at Home, Flambé

By Yiannis Moundelas

darling, when it comes to strawberries / you’re like me

Translated from Greek by Sarah Katherine McCann

Night Does Not Fall

By Nikos Violaris

Night / does not fall / nor does it come

Translated from Greek by Peter Constantine

Day, A

By Yiannis Moundelas

Translated from Greek by Sarah Katherine McCann

From “Mezzanine”

By Nikos Kachtitsis

Neither should my death be attributed to any of the enemies I obtained in my country after the war.

Translated from Greek by Lissi Athanasiou Krikeli & George Fragopoulos

From “Paris–Athens”

By Vassilis Alexakis

Silence I don't know when I began to write this book.

Translated from Greek by Andriana Mastor

Kaspar Hauser in a Desolate Land from “The Double Book”

By Dimitris Chatzis

I haven't seen that chain-smoking Spanish girl for days.

Translated from Greek by Peter Constantine

From “God Tells Them All”

By Sotiris Dimitriou

Go on, my man, tell your story.

Translated from Greek by Patricia Felisa Barbeito

Nazif the Turk from Ioannina

By Vassilis Gkourogiannis

The drivers emerged and made their way towards the last car to see what exactly was going on.

Translated from Greek by Patricia Felisa Barbeito

From “The Sleepwalker”

By Margarita Karapanou

Alan leapt out of bed. It was a quarter to seven and he had missed the boat.

Translated from Greek by Karen Emmerich

From “Suit in the Soil”

By Ioanna Karystiani

His passenger had gotten out and was sitting on a rock, talking to himself and wiping sweat from his face and neck with a handkerchief.

Translated from Greek by Karen Emmerich

Green Card

By Petros Markaris

He was wearing a pair of threadbare jeans and a checked shirt. There was a cardboard sign hanging round his neck.

Translated from Greek by David Connolly

Can Anybody Hear Me?

By Ersi Sotiropoulos

There were only two blocks to go, but she had started dragging her feet.

Translated from Greek by Karen Emmerich

From “The Book of Andreas Kordopatis, Part I, America”

By Thanassis Valtinos

Hello, I say, they look at me, two men and some women, they don't say a thing.

Translated from Greek by Jane Assimakopoulos

From “Paris–Athens”

By Vassilis Alexakis

Silence I don't know when I started to write this book.

Translated from French by Alyson Waters

From “A Short Border Handbook”

By Gazmend Kapllani

My entire body was stiff, I was freezing cold and shaking all over.

Translated from Greek by Anne-Marie Stanton-Ife

Bats

By Lena Kitsopoulou

We were only thirteen. We blended in, so we were invisible.

Translated from Greek by Sidney J. Kornberg

Light

By Amanda Michalopoulou

After the rain, the clouds shrank and the sky shone silver.

Translated from Greek by Karen Emmerich

Chinese Woman’s Spirit

By Marigo Alexopoulou

The driver peers into his rearview mirror. / You are not there.

Translated from Greek by Peter Constantine

The Thief

By Marigo Alexopoulou

One day I came back and he wasn't there.

Translated from Greek by Peter Constantine

The Way You Might Break a Finger

By Amanda Michalopoulou

One has to be contemplating suicide to paint a room brown. Now it looks a bit better.

Translated from Greek by Peter Constantine

The Oracles of the Virgin

By Stylianos S. Charkianakis

Buried inside us were the sounds / of the songs we heard in the cradle

Translated from Greek by Peter Constantine

Elegy

By Stylianos S. Charkianakis

However many times I now set out / on the road of return

Translated from Greek by Peter Constantine

Scots: The Auld an Nobill Tung

By Peter Constantine

What is Scots? Is it Gaelic? A dialect of English? English with a Gaelic brogue? A hodgepodge of English and Gaelic?