Reading List for Grecophiles
Travel Writing
| Reflections on a Marine Venus: A Companion to the Landscape of Rhodes by Lawrence Durrell Lawrence Durrell introduces us to the Dodecanese island of Rhodes, circa 1945. The title refers to a statue found in the harbor. In a Lindos devoid of hotels (imagine!) the mayor takes the traveling Durrell into his home for the night. |
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| Prospero’s Cell: A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corcyra by Lawrence Durrell Durrell convinced his mother, siblings and wife to move from England to Corfu (Kerkyra in Greek) in the 1930s where he remained until the war forced him to evacuate. His deep thoughts and reflections memorialize this romantic Ionian island. |
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| The Greek Islands by Lawrence Durrell Published in 1978, Durrell offers a half century’s worth of poetic insights, as this tender excerpt demonstrates: “(Naxos and Paros) seem to coexist in the mind as being of comparable charm and magnitude. But there are several radical differences . . . If Naxos is a vivid parrot, then Paros is a white dove. You wake earlier in Naxos, but you sleep deeper in Paros.” |
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| Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller At Lawrence Durrell’s urging, American author Henry Miller spent six months roaming around Greece in 1939. It took a world war to force him to leave the country with which he became intoxicated and characterized as “a holy land.” Many critics consider Colossus of Maroussi Miller’s finest work of “literature.” |
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| The Summer of My Greek Taverna by Tom Stone A resident of the island of Patmos for 22 years, the author’s problems start when he gets roped into relocating to Crete to run a seaside taverna. This memoir is fun reading and includes some of Stone’s prized culinary recipes from his Greek kitchen. |
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| Dinner with Persephone by Patricia Storace An award-winning American writer spends a year in Greece and offers up a fascinating insider’s look at the psychology of a country which exists uneasily between the West and the East. Her insights are splendidly entertaining and not found elsewhere in English language travel writing about Greece. |
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| Greece: A Love Story by Camille Cusumano (editor) Nineteen American women share their diverse experiences living in or visiting Greece. A Brooklyn chef apprentices for a summer in a Lesvos taverna. A daughter buries her mother’s ashes on Greek soil. An adoptee seeks to uproot her Greek roots in Epirus. A cyclist achieves her personal best in the Peloponnese. |
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Fiction
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Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis |
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Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres |
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Biography
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Greek Fire by Nicholas Gage Aristotle Onassis and Maria Callas, Greece’s most famous modern lovers, come to life in this titillating but faithful account about very wealthy Greeks and their often very tragic lives. Avoid this book if you can’t bear to read Jackie O get trashed. |
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North of Ithaka: A Journey Home Through a Family’s Extraordinary Past by Eleni Gage A New Yorker travels to her grandmother’s northern Greek village to rebuild the family home where a tragedy and crime occurred during the Greek civil war. The house’s reconstruction acts as a catharsis for the family to bury its bitter memories. The author’s father, Nicolas Gage, wrote the bestseller Eleni which initially detailed the catastrophe. |
History, Religion, Mythology
| The Greeks by H.D.F. Kitto Written by a British classical scholar, The Greeks covers the breadth of ancient Greek culture and serves as a general text of the era. The author queries why Athens remained a small city-state (polis) while the Romans amassed an empire. The answer lies in the Greeks’ active and devoted participation in civic government. This book demonstrates why Greece earned the epithet, “Cradle of Western Civilization”. |
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| Sailing the Wine Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter by Thomas Cahill If you liked How the Irish Saved Civilization, you will want to read the same author’s historical survey of ancient Greek life and achievement. Cahill examines six archetypes to explain the ancients’ thoughts and feelings, including the playwright (Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides), the poet (Sappho), the philosopher (Socratics, Plato, Aristotle) and the politician (Solon). This is not a primer; some prior knowledge is expected. |
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| A Concise History of Greece by Richard Clogg From the War for Independence in the 1820s to the present day, the informed scholar as well as a lay reader with no prior knowledge of Greece will walk away sufficiently illuminated with, according to the Times Literary Supplement, “the basic knowledge needed to understand Greece and what made it what it is today.” Lively reading with a theme linking Greece’s past and present. |
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| Between Heaven and Earth: The Greek Church by John Tomkinson The Greek Orthodox Church was and remains a major player in Greece’s political, social and even economic life — reason alone to study the religion. Tomkinson’s book serves as a proper introduction to a powerful institution. You learn the church’s history from the time of the apostles, the meaning of the dozens of festivals, the symbolism of those mysterious icons and much more. For English speakers, this is the book to read. |
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| Greek Gods and Heroes by Robert Graves The famous British poet invented novel interpretations of the Greek myths and his book continues to dominate the English language market in this field. Indeed, since its 1955 publication Greek Gods and Heroes has never been out of print. Here Graves presents the most popular myths in an accessible, non-scholarly form. He was particularly inspired by matriarchies and goddess cultures. |
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| Diplomacy Lessons: Realism for an Unloved Superpowerby John Brady Kiesling
As the first diplomat to resign in protest to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Kiesling was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Athens at the time he tendered his courageous resignation letter to then Secretary of State Colin Powell. Although his book focuses on foreign policy, many of his personal anecdotes derive from his Greece experiences and provide an insightful window into contemporary Greek-American political relations. |
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Cooking |
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| Mediterranean Hot and Spicy by Aglaia Kremazi Aglaia Kremezi is Greece’s national treasure for traditional cuisine. She has written four delightful Greek and Mediterranean cookbooks full of mouth-watering recipes designed to make even the gods on Olympus swoon: The Foods of Greece, Mediterranean Hot and Spicy, The Foods of the Greek Islands and The Mediterranean Pantry. If your baklava technqiues are a bit rusty Aglaia and her friends will be happy to give you cooking lessons at her cooking school Artisanal center on the beautiful Cyclades island of Kea. |
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| Greek Cuisine by Vefa Alexiadou If you want real home-style Greek cooking, this is it. Vefa is Greece’s Julia Child and her recipes will have you serving up traditional dishes that would earn you the respect of any Greek yiayia (grandmother). Vefa excels in making complicated dishes easy for novice non-Greek cooks. |
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Children |
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| Plato at Olympia by Stephen G. Miller The author, a distinguished American archaeologist, fictionalizes a story of Plato as a youth and his desire to partake in the Olympic Games. Youngsters – and adults, too — will savor the illuminating picture Miller paints of Athens in the 4th century BC, a cameo appearance by Socrates, references to historical events, and descriptions of Olympic Games, customs, sayings, and daily life in Ancient Greece. Lovely illustrations by Athena Stamatis. Please contact us if you’re interested in ordering a copy. |
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