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Greece

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
MultimediaMultilingual
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
gulls woke me
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?