Greece

Zorba the Greek

A stunning new translation by Peter Bien of the classic book brings the clarity and beauty of Kazantzakis’ language and story alive.

First published in 1946, Zorba the Greek, is, on one hand, the story of a Greek working man named Zorba, a passionate lover of life, the unnamed narrator who he accompanies to Crete to work in a lignite mine, and the men and women of the town where they settle. On the other hand it is the story of God and man, the Devil and the Saints; the struggle of men to find their souls and purpose in life and it is about love, courage and faith.

Zorba has been acclaimed as one of the truly memorable creations of literature—a character created on a huge scale in the tradition of Falstaff and Sancho Panza. His years have not dimmed the gusto and amazement with which he responds to all life offers him, whether he is working in the mine, confronting mad monks in a mountain monastery, embellishing the tales of his life or making love to avoid sin. Zorba’s life is rich with all the joys and sorrows that living brings and his example awakens in the narrator an understanding of the true meaning of humanity. This is one of the greatest life-affirming novels of our time.

Part of the modern literary canon, Zorba the Greek, has achieved widespread international acclaim and recognition. This new edition translated directly from Kazantzakis’ Greek original by Peter Bien is a more faithful rendition of the original language, ideas, and story, and presents Zorba as the author meant him to be.

(A special thank you to book club member, Beth Cummings for the suggestion.)

Note: While there is another translation of this book, this particular translation by Peter Bien is the one we recommend. It’s a direct translation from Greek to English instead of the previous version which translated the Greek into French before translating the French into English introducing a wide variety of mistakes.

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Austerity Measures

A remarkable collection of poetic voices from contemporary Greece, Austerity Measures is a one-of-a-kind window into the creative energy that has arisen from the country’s decade of crisis and a glimpse into what it is like to be Greek today.

The 2008 debt crisis shook Greece to the core and went on to shake the world. More recently, Greece has become one of the main channels into Europe for refugees from poverty and war. Greece stands at the center of today’s most intractable conflicts, and this situation has led to a truly extraordinary efflorescence of innovative and powerfully moving Greek poetry. Karen Van Dyck’s wide-ranging bilingual anthology—which covers the whole contemporary Greek poetry scene, from literary poets to poets of the spoken word to poets online, and more—offers an unequaled sampling of some of the richest and most exciting poetry of our time.

“It was no more than two or three poems in before I started to sense the book’s atmosphere, to see it as an uncommon chance to share Greek experience beyond the headlines—in a way that is fascinating, revelatory and only possible through poetry. Most poems here do not overtly address the crisis. But the collective spirit is new-minted, unmediated and bracing (the quality of translation high).” —The Observer

“The light these poets work in, and the language they speak, are still the light and the language of Homer and the great tragedians. The wonderfully inventive translations reveal a different Greece to English readers: one that does not cancel the past but builds upon it.” —Ruth Padel, award-winning British poet and author

(Group read suggestion from Julie Jacobs, book club moderator.)

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Better Dead than Divorced

Winner of 8 national awards

A romance.
A forced marriage.
A scandalous affair.
A hit man.
A true story.

“I tried to open my eyes, hoping to stir up enough courage to face the frightening commotion just outside our window. It was no use. My imagination ran wild as I conjured up all kinds of horrors unfolding out in the darkness.” These are the words of a young boy living in a small Greek mountain village in the 1950s trying to understand the booming noises out in the night that turned out to be gunshots. It’s a defining moment from Better Dead than Divorced. The boy is Lukas Konandreas, the author of this true story about the forced marriage and murder of Panayota, his father’s cousin.

Even after becoming a doctor and then immigrating to the US, Konandreas remained haunted by what happened in his village so long ago. “It has taken me years to piece together this story,” says Konandreas. “I didn’t want filial love to blind me to the truth, but my family reacted strongly to my research. ‘It’s a story that must be told,’ some said, ‘for Panayota if for no other reason.’ Others were less supportive. ‘Leave the dead alone,’ they said. ‘Let them lie peacefully in the cemetery of St. Anthony.’”

But needing to know what happened, Konandreas went on to conduct more than 160 interviews along with painstaking research of historic court records and old newspaper accounts to discover all the details.

Hollywood could not invent a better antagonist than George Nitsos. Outwardly, he had it all—good looks, money, charisma, power, and influence—while Panayota was a young village beauty. When it was discovered that George had taken Panayota’s virginity, her family, led by the author’s father, forces George to marry the girl. Yet the other village girls still could not resist George’s boyish charms. And he certainly wasn’t going to let marriage stand in the way of his indiscretions. Friends encouraged Panayota to leave George, but she felt this would bring shame to her. “Better dead than divorced,” she’s quoted as saying. And dead is how she ends up, killed by a hired hit man. But the story doesn’t end there as the author’s father driven by honor and conscience fights beyond his modest means to seek justice in a corrupt system.

Romance. Marriage. Scandal. Murder. The pursuit of justice. Sometimes, the truth is stranger and more compelling than fiction.

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

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Diaries of Exile

Winner of the 2014 PEN Literary Award for Poetry in Translation

Yannis Ritsos is a poet whose writing life is entwined with the contemporary history of his homeland. Nowhere is this more apparent than in this volume, which presents a series of three diaries in poetry that Ritsos wrote between 1948 and 1950, during and just after the Greek Civil War, while a political prisoner first on the island of Limnos and then at the infamous camp on Makronisos.

Even in this darkest of times, Ritsos dedicated his days to poetry, trusting in writing and in art as collective endeavors capable of resisting oppression and bringing people together across distance and time. These poems offer glimpses into the daily routines of life in exile, the quiet violence Ritsos and his fellow prisoners endured, the fluctuations in the prisoners’ sense of solidarity, and their struggle to maintain humanity through language. This moving volume justifies Ritsos’s reputation as one of the truly important poets in Greece’s modern literary history.

From this collection:

“Smooth-cheeked kid uncombed unwashed
at morning call with clouds for company
dark red sweater unbuttoned pants
still sleepy - a scrap of sleep melting in his hair
a rembetika song in his pocket
I’ll comb you, I’ll wash you, I’ll tighten your belt
I’ll take back all the words they took from me
the words no one knows to give me
the words I can’t ask for”
— December 5

(Group read suggestion from Julie Jacobs, book club moderator.)

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Lysistrata and Other Plays

Writing at the time of political and social crisis in Athens, Aristophanes was an eloquent yet bawdy challenger to the demagogue and the sophist.

An ancient Greek comedy, Lysistrata was originally performed in Athens in 411 BC detailing a comic account of a woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War between Greek city states by denying all the men of the land any sex. Lysistrata persuades the women of the warring cities to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace—a strategy that instead inflames the battle between the sexes.

The play is also notable for being an early exposé of sexual relations in a male-dominated society. Greek theatre was a profound form of entertainment and was extremely popular as it addressed political issues relevant to that time.

Two other plays are also included. The Achanians is a classic of the highly satirical genre of drama known as Old Comedy which is set against the background of the long war with Sparta. The Clouds is a darker comedy which satirizes Athenian philosophers and reflects the uncertainties of a generation in which all traditional religious and ethical beliefs were being challenged.

(A special thank you to book club member, Sue Attalla for the suggestion.)

Note: We recommend this translation by Alan H. Sommerstein which contains 3 plays, however, as a club read, we’ll be focusing on Lysistrata, the main comedy included. There are free versions of this comedy, but the translation is nowhere near as good.

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Something Will Happen, You’ll See

Something Will Happen, You’ll See is a heart-wrenching elegy on the impoverished working-class Greeks populating the neighborhoods around Piraeus, the large port southwest of Athens.

Ikonomou’s luminous and poignant short stories center around laid-off steelworkers, warehousemen, families, pensioners, and young couples faced with sudden loss and turmoil. Between docks, in tenement buildings, and on city streets Ikonomou’s men and women sustain their traumas on flickers of hope in the darkness and on their deep faith in humanity.

An illuminating examination of the human condition, Ikonomou’s award-winning book has become the literary emblem of the Greek crisis; stories so real, humane, and haunting that they will stay with the reader long after the final page.

“The Greek Faulkner... one of the most touching chronicles of the economic crisis to have come out of Greece.” —La Repubblica

(Group read suggestion from Mia DeGiovine Chaveco, book club co-founder.)

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The Odyssey

“Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, presents us with Homer's best-loved and most accessible poem in a stunning modern-verse translation.

‘Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy.’ So begins Robert Fagles' magnificent translation of the Odyssey, which Jasper Griffin in the New York Times Book Review hails as ‘a distinguished achievement.’

If the Iliad is the world's greatest war epic, the Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of an everyman's journey through life. Odysseus' reliance on his wit and wiliness for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War is at once a timeless human story and an individual test of moral endurance. In the myths and legends  retold here,

Fagles has captured the energy and poetry of Homer's original in a bold, contemporary idiom, and given us an Odyssey to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery. Renowned classicist Bernard Knox's superb introduction and textual commentary provide insightful background information for the general reader and scholar alike, intensifying the strength of Fagles's translation. This is an Odyssey to delight both the classicist and the general reader, to captivate a new generation of Homer's students.”

Note: The Robert Fagles translation is the version we recommend: It’s a “jaw-droppingly beautiful rendering of Homer's Odyssey. Fagles captures the rapid and direct language of the original Greek, while telling the story of Odysseus in lyrics that ring with a clear, energetic voice.”

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