If you want to know the real Greece
If you want to know the real Greece
Try reading some of these books
I love books, real books!
There’s something about the physical feel of a book that online reading can’t give. So on a recent trip back to France I dug around in my lockup and returned to Greece with several good books to re-read.
Exploring a country through reading
When I moved from London to Brittany last century (!), I read all I could about the place. About Douarnenez where I’d bought a house, about Finistère, and about the wider region as well as the Breton language, customs, history and its many myths and legends.
That immersion helped me integrate into the local community as well as deepening my appreciation for the Celtic culture more generally. I’d studied French in Wales, another Celtic country that has a lot in common with Brittany. And my mother had Welsh ancestry. So feeling at home wasn’t difficult.
The same does not apply to Greece, especially as mastery of the language is a faraway dream. Which to my mind is all the more reason to learn as much as I can about this wonderful but oh so historically troubled country.
Onto the books I recommend
This isn’t an exhaustive list which would go on for pages and I know there are loads I haven’t read nor even heard of. These though will take you some of the way and I hope will encourage you to find and share your own list. Please feel free to share your recommendations in the comments. The more the better!
In no particular order:
Roger Silverman Defiance: Greece and Europe
A socialist history of modern Greece. A book I’ve read twice and will certainly do so again. It’s not an easy read, at times my blood heat rose to boiling point at the atrocities it describes. We need to realise how distorted much of the mainstream historical narrative is.
Yanis Varoufakis And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe’s Crisis and America’s Economic Future
I could have chosen almost any of YV’s books as I have found every one I have read to be worthwhile. Not everyone appreciates him or his politics but in this age of crisis I find his writing pertinent. In case anyone is wondering, I know he has a house somewhere on Aigina where I used to live but I never bumped into him!
Peter Levi The Hill of Kronos
This is a book I’ve now read three times and get more out of at each reading. Peter Levi, poet, academic, archaeologist and former Jesuit priest, knew Greece exceptionally well for having walked its hills and valleys in search of places mentioned by the historian Pausanias. He was working on a commentary of Pausanias, and lived through many of the country’s 20th century events. He came to know many notable personalities, poets featuring large among them.
Kevin Andrews The Flight of Ikaros, Travels in Greece During the Civil War & Roger Jinkinson American Ikaros, the search for Kevin Andrews
For obvious reasons, these two belong together. Andrews arrived in Greece in 1947 during the civil war that followed WW2. It was the award of a Fulbright Fellowship to research the castles and fortifications of the Morea region of the Peloponnese that turned him into a lifelong philhellene. Patrick Leigh Fermor (see below) described The Flight of Ikaros as “one of the great and lasting books about Greece”. I agree. Andrews made significant revisions for the 1968 edition. The subtitle of the first version was A Journey into Greece. Roger Jinkinson’ book complements Andrews’ and adds greatly to an understanding of this highly talented, charming, confused and often difficult man.
Patrick Leigh Fermor A Time to Keep Silence; Mani: Travels in the South Peloponnese; & Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece
I’ve read all PLF’s books relating to Greece and re-read them with increasing pleasure, knowing that each re-reading will give me new insights into this country and its people. I’m fascinated by Fermor’s life and writings — he was without doubt adventurous, brave, privileged, right-wing and probably a cultural snob to boot. An exhibition about PLF and artist friends John Craxton and Nikos Ghika at the British Museum a few years ago was aptly entitled Charmed Lives. I have a sneaking regret I wasn’t born in an earlier era of unrestricted travel. If you haven’t already, read him.
Lawrence Durrell Prospero’s Cell, Reflections on a Marine Venus & Bitter Lemons
Not perhaps Durrell’s best-known works but quite wonderful for all that. The first describes his time in Corfu where he persuaded his mother to settle from England with his siblings. The family’s life there is depicted by his brother Gerald in My Family and Other Animals — another book I recommend to you. Reflections is about his time on Rhodes and Bitter Lemons his time in Cyprus. An expatriate from early on, he was a novelist (The Alexandria Quartet is gripping in its intensity and cast of memorable character), dramatist and poet as well as travel writer. Not though an easy man. His daughter Sappho was testimony to that.
Henry Miller The Colossus of Maroussi
This will get its long-overdue third reading whenever I can find it in one of my many boxes of books in storage. (Or even better if I can manage to get them over here.) A true classic. It even managed to captivate a friend convinced that nothing about Greece could possibly ever interest him!
Roderick Beaton Greece & The Greeks: A Global History
I am still reading the second and much denser of these two books. I will take it with me as my only book if/when I manage a few days away somewhere quiet. The first though, as you can perhaps see from the creased spine in the photo, has been read and deserves a second reading. I first read it some years ago and now need to refresh my memory in the light of all I have read and learnt since.
Melina Mercouri I was born Greek
A truly brilliant book that covers Mercouri’s life up to and including the colonels’ dictatorship of Greece. Her intelligence and political acumen shine through every page. I was frequently torn between laughter and tears, and read it from cover to cover in no time. My rather battered hardback copy is on its way to me among a load of other books I decided that I needed with me here in Epidavros.
Daphne Kapsali 100 days of solitude: finding yourself in Sifnos
An inspirational read for any writer about to embark on a new phase of their writing life— as I was when I re-read this book just before I returned from France to Greece a few weeks ago. A diary with a difference and one I recommend unreservedly. Enjoy!
Now for a few novels
About which I will say little in the interests of keeping this newsletter to a manageable length!
Sofka Zinovieff Eurydice Street & House on Paradise Street
Loved them both. She’s not Greek but married to one and lives in Athens. Her podcast series Athens Unlocked on thisisathens.org is also well worth listening to.
Nikos Katzantzakis Freedom and Death
One of Greece’s best known novelists. I preferred this to Zorba.
Madeline Miller Circe & The Song of Achilles
Re-writings of ancient myths. Gripping, both.
Pat Barker The Silence of the Girls
A recounting of the Iliad from the point of view of a little known character, Briseis, given as a slave to Achilles. I haven’t yet read the follow-up, The Women of Troy, but it’s on the list.
Victoria Hislop The Thread: A Novel & Those Who Are Loved
The first is about the aftermath in Thessaloniki of what in Greece is known as the Catastrophe and the second a family saga set in Athens and covering most of the 20th century history of Greece. I found both un-put-downable.
Louis de Bernières Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
A classic and deeply moving novel that had me both crying and laughing. Perfect Greek island holiday reading but not only.
And of course there are the poets
Giorgios Seferis, Constantine Cafavy, Yannis Ritsos, Nikos Gatsos, Kostis Palamas, Odysseas Elytis…
I wish my Greek was up to reading them in the original. As it is not (yet), I rely wherever possible on bilingual editions. That way at least I’m getting something more than a translation however excellent.
Lastly
A book that’s currently unavailable but that I’d love to read if anyone has a copy they would be willing to part with:
Theordore Pagiavlas Holy Madness of Modern Greece