Grèce

Alexander's beauty, strength and defiance were apparent from birth, but his boyhood honed those gifts into the makings of a king. His mother, Olympias, and his father, King Philip of Macedon, fought each other for their son's loyalty, teaching Alexander politics and vengeance from the cradle. His love for the youth Hephaistion taught him trust, while Aristotle's tutoring provoked his mind and Homer's Iliad fuelled his aspirations. Killing his first man in battle at the age of twelve, he became regent at sixteen and commander of Macedon's cavalry at eighteen, so that by the time his father was murdered, Alexander's skills had grown to match his fiery ambition.

My father, thunderstruck, was demanding to know: "But when? This is madness! Impossible." When ar fasf he replaces the receiver in a grand Shakespearean manner - my father has it in the blood - he broke the news to us: Dictatorship. My mother cried out and collapsed in a heap on the sofa. Calliope the maid, as part of her duties, always manages to sense the right moment for a restorative coffee, and set off for the kitchen. My father repeated: "Dictatorship, do you hear!" I stared at him, shaking off sleep. This is how Myrsini Panayotou, an Athenian girl about to start university, learns of the coup d'etat that brought to power the infamous dictatorship of the "Colonels" in her country in the early hours of Friday, 21st April 1967. The child of a well-to-do family, Myrsini enthusiastically joins the underground resistance, making common cause with a varied cast of characters from backgrounds very different from her own. After an early failed love affair, she gets engaged to George, a political prisoner, only to find her human instincts increasingly difficult to reconcile with her idealistic philosophy once he is released. The story moves towards its climax as Myrsini becomes involved in the bloody events of 17th November 1973, when tanks were used to evict students from the Athens Polytechnic. At the same time the fortunes of Myrsini's family form a backdrop at once touching and bizarre to an impressionable girl's unflinching search for a true identity, both for herself and for her country. "Fool's Gold" is a sparkling novel by a talented writer, one of the foremost of a generation which grew up in the shadow of the events Maro Douka describes.

Alexander the Great died at the age of thirty-three, leaving behind an empire that stretched from Greece and Egypt to India. After Alexander's death in 323 B.C. his only direct heirs were two unborn sons and a simpleton half-brother. Every long-simmering faction exploded into the vacuum of power. Wives, distant relatives and generals all vied for the loyalty of the increasingly undisciplined Macedonian army. Most failed and were killed in the attempt. For no one possessed the leadership to keep the great empire from crumbling. But Alexander's legend endured to spread into worlds he had seen only in dreams.

A love born during the years of the Occupation reaches a peak of intensity. As the two young people grow up, in love, thousands of people are dying of hunger, the innocent are being tortured and patriots executed. Love does not triumph, however, but is brought to an end. The Germans begin to round up the Jews, including Gioconda ... A true story, of one of the most beautiful but tragic adolescent experiences.

It is the eve of the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, and Chrysovalantis—a chronically unsuccessful but enthusiastic employee of the publishing industry—has been put out of work yet again. He begins a vitriolic monologue, taking aim at his many persecutors, from cruel bosses to opportunistic women to embar­rassing, crippling illnesses. An ageing relic of a bygone era, hounded by the challenges of a fast-changing city, he nonetheless sees the irony of his plight. Vice-ridden yet God-fearing, family-loving yet swindled even by his own sisters, this repentant anti-hero will set his record straight once and for all. And God is his witness.

God's Pauper is an imaginative retelling of the life of St. Francis. Kazantzakis' writings are an anguished expression of the eternal struggle between the spirit and flesh, and he uses the story of St. Francis to draw us into the Maelstrom. The story is dramatically unfolded to us by the Saint's constant companion, Frate Leone, who takes us through agonies of physical and spiritual humiliation. We accompany the Saint before the Pope to establish his Brotherhood; to Damietta and the Saracen armies; and in solitary vigils on Mount Alvernia. The minutest and the mightiest elements of nature form the backcloth to the drama of events. Hate, compassion, jealousy and fear are among the principal ingredients in the drama, fused together with infinite subtlety.

The protagonist in each of these stories is a solitary individual, alienated from society, haunted Dy memurira, fascinated by the disgusting, obsessed with the relationship between love and death, and fetishistically attached to certain objects that bear the traces of traumatic experiences. Ioannou brilliantly highlights the discrepancy between intimate acts of sex and violence, and the way people pretend in public that life can be lived withoutphysicality. In "Good Friday Vigil"- his last book of stories before his untimely death in 1985 - Ioannou departs from the conversational tone of his earlier work and develops an intricate style whose wanderings evoke the associative meanderings of the memory.

Με μεγάλη χαρά ανακοινώνουμε την κυκλοφορία του επόμενου τεύχος της σειράς αγγλικών βιβλίων για μικρούς και μεγάλους που εισάγουν τους αναγνώστες στον κόσμο και στον πολιτισμό της αρχαίας Ελλάδας μέσα από τις εμβληματικές ηρωίδες της μυθολογίας, με θέμα τη μυθική μορφή της Αριάδνης και τον περίφημο Μίτο της που έγινε η αιτία να σωθεί ο Θησέας από βέβαιο θάνατο. Είτε πρόκειται για διασκευές κλασικών τραγωδιών του Ευριπίδη, του Αισχύλου και του Σοφοκλή είτε για πρωτότυπα έργα βασισμένα σε γνωστές πηγές, τα βιβλία αυτά έχουν στόχο να παρασύρουν τους αναγνώστες σε ένα ταξίδι γεμάτο περιπέτεια, δράμα, θάνατο και έρωτα, ενώ παράλληλα εστιάζουν στις γυναίκες που έπαιξαν τόσο σημαντικό ρόλο στην ιστορία μας -και συχνά εξακολουθούν να μνημονεύονται ως απλοί θεατές. Η σειρά ξεκίνησε με τα βιβλία Μήδεια, Κίρκη, Ηλέκτρα, συνεχίστηκε με την Αντιγόνη και την Ελένη ενώ πλέον ολοκληρώνεται με την έκδοση της Αριάδνης. Κάθε βιβλίο μπορεί να διαβαστεί ξεχωριστά και μπορείτε να αρχίσετε την ανάγνωση με οποιαδήποτε σειρά, όμως υπάρχει ένα βασικό νήμα που εντέλει συνδέει όλους αυτούς τους χαρακτήρες και παρέχει μια ευρύτερη άποψη για το τι ήταν να είσαι γυναίκα στον αρχαίο ελληνικό κόσμο.

This book suggests that poetry offers a way to remain in the world – not only by declarations of intent or the promotion of remembrance, but also through the durable physicality of its practice. Whether carved in stone or wood, printed onto a page, beat out by a mimetic or rhythmic body, or humming in the mind, poems are meant to engrave and adhere. Ancient Greek poetry exhibits a particularly acute awareness of change, decay, and the ephemerality inherent in mortality. Yet it couples its presentation of this awareness with an offering of meaningful embodiment in shifting forms that are aligned with, yet subtly manipulative of, mortal time. Sarah Nooter's argument ranges widely across authors and genres, from Homer and the Homeric Hymns through Sappho and Archilochus to Pindar and Aeschylus. The book will be compelling reading for all those interested in Greek literature and in poetry more broadly.