This is the fifth of my monthly chronicles on living through pandemic times, as told from the perspective of an American mystery writer who has called Greece home for 35 years. My wife and I had been in lockdown mode at our pastoral New Jersey farm since late February, but for August we experienced lockdown Manhattan-style. I’ve entrusted...
Read moreA place of discovery, escape and joy in leafy Pangrati. Walking into Lexikopoleio feels like coming home, because there’s an inexplicable warmth and safety it fosters. The musky smell of the books, the vibrant colours of the covers, the texture of the pages and spine - that in itself is a draw -but when it is peopled by staff who love lit...
Read moreA trip to Paris is stalled, and two wanderlusts Katerina and Yannis Chytiroglou convert their frustration into what they’d wanted to do in Paris – flâner, that untranslatable French word to just float about aimlessly absorbing the essence of the city into a travel boutique. Flâneur is all that and more. So much more than souvenirs, it is ...
Read moreWhether they’re opening their lives up for public inspection, or through the exploratory lens of therapy, you will enjoy these laugh-out-loud New York Times best-sellers, Anna Roins suggests. Becoming, by Michele Obama (Crown, 13 Nov 2018) It’s been said that ‘First ladies are, for the most part, second-hand celebrities...
Read moreThe Irish Embassy, in collaboration with Athens Insider, announces its first-ever Bloomsday creative writing competition in English, open to writers of all ages and nationalities. Bloomsday is marked around the world as a celebration of James Joyce, of course, but also as a celebration of Irish literature, modernist writing and creativity...
Read moreEditions Assouline's dreamy coffee table books often are as attractive as the destinations they cover. Its latest addition, the Athens Riviera coffee table book is a stunning photo album that retraces the history and spirit of Athens and its inhabitants. Discover a city that we have known for millennia, but whose contemporaneity is too of...
Read moreYannis Zervos is probably Athens' most colourful, entertaining story-teller, traversing continents and characters in his engaging prose. In Passage to Paradise, Hellenic Sketches of the Mind, so named for the delightfully appointed house and garden he grew up in, Zervos paints a vivid picture of life in post-war Greece and the incredibly ...
Read moreMichael Ondaatje’s new novel, Warlight (shortlisted for the Man Booker and the Walter Scott Prize), opens with a scene where Nathaniel Williams is crouched over his desk, trying to pull together the threads of his fractured adolescence and declares, “As if I cannot see what is taking place in the dark beyond the movement of this pencil. T...
Read moreJohn Carr reviews Leo Kanaris’ gripping potboilers with private eye George Zafiris. Both Codename Xenophon and Dangerous Days are spiked with Zafiris’ incisive descriptions of Athens and its resilient crisis- scarred people. Whether you opt for the beach or balcony to snuggle with these thrillers, before long, you’ll be rooting for the un...
Read moreBorn during the Spanish Civil War, author Miriam Frank was five years old when she boarded the famous Serpia Pinto in 1941, unaware that she and her mother Kate were escaping the round-ups, separations and extermination camps of Nazi Germany. By the age of 12, Miriam had fled two wars and lived in three continents and now divides her time...
Read moreTimothy Jay Smith’s Fire on the Island unveils the complex layers that guise the sun-drenched, bougainvillea-tinted Greek isle, blighted by declining tourism and the seemingly intractable refugee crisis. There are family feuds and a corrupt clergy. There is racism and homophobia. But there is romance, humour and mystery too! An engaging s...
Read moreCrime novelist Jeff Siger – whose 'trouble in paradise' murder mysteries get under the seamy underbellies of whitewashed Greek isles, presents his 10th book in the Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series, Island of Secrets, set in his beloved Mykonos. Congratulations! “The Mykonos Mob”—now available in paperback as “Island of Secr...
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