Greece: A Traveler's Literary Companion

Table of Contents

Athens:
Vassilis Vassilikos "The White Bear"
Marios Hakkas "The Fresco"
Odysseus Elytis "Funerary Epigrams"

The Peloponnese:
Nikos Kazantzakis "Pilgrimage Through Greece"
Ilias Venezis "Mycenae"
Thanassis Valtinos "Panayotis"

Mani:
Leonidas Zenakos "The Hole in the Rock"

Central Greece:
George Seferis "Delphi"
Eva Vlami "Galaxidi: The Fate of a Maritime Town"

The Ionian Islands:
Ilias Venezis "Lefkas"

Epirus:
Dimitris Hatzis "Sioulas the Tanner"
Christoforos Milionis "Carnival"

Thessaly:
Georgios Drosinis "Angel John the Thief"

Macedonia:
Yorgos Ioannou "The Dogs of Seikh-Sou"
Yiorgos Chouliaras "America Is No Longer Here"

Thrace:
Elli Alexiou "The Fountain of Brahim-Baba"
Michel Fais "Autobiography of a Book"

The Eastern Aegean:
Alexandra Papadopoulou "The Regards"

The Cyclades:
Kostas Ouranis "In the Old Catholic Syros"
Melpo Axioti "My Home"

Crete:
Manolis Xexakis "The Smile from the Abyss"
Rhea Galanaki "Black and White"

The Dodecanese:
Margarita Karapanou "Kalymnos"
Eugenia Fakinou "Astradeni"

Greece is a heady experience, with the hot sun and whitewashed homes, the sea, the food and people, the ruins, culture, and history. No matter which guide books one takes and how well versed one is in Homer and Sophocles, who doesn't sail into Piraéus feeling woefully ill-prepared to appreciate the glories of Greece? The 24 finely crafted short stories by modern Greek writers (many appear in English for the first time), arranged geographically (by Athens, the Peloponnese, Crete, and so on), help weave together some understanding of ancient, literary, and modern Greece.