Grèce

A translation of Homer's poem of war which is a magnificent testimony to the power of the Iliad. This volume retells the story of Achilles, the great warrior, and his terrible wrath before the walls of besieged Troy, and the destruction it wreaks on both Greeks and Trojans.

Hector bidding farewell to his wife and baby son, Odysseus bound to the mast listening to the Sirens, Penelope at the loom, Achilles dragging Hector's body round the walls of Troy - scenes from Homer have been reportrayed in every generation. The questions about mortality and identity that Homer's heroes ask, the bonds of love, respect and fellowship that motivate them, have gripped audiences for three millennia. Chapman's Iliad and Odyssey are great English epic poems, but they are also two of the liveliest and readable translations of Homer.

In this book, you hold time and truth in your hands: this is how I understand Andrea Demetriou's beautiful and moving poetry. Her words and her silences -for like all true poets, Demetriou understands the dignity and profound power of the pause- take us from a Cyprus shattered and divided by the horror of war and occupation, to an evocation of the sights and sounds of inner-city Melbourne streets and then they return us to the eastern Mediterranean to where another form of war, an economic war, again shatters and divides. In her poems, it is as if time and memory run through our fingers; we try and catch them but as is their nature, they slip away, fall to the ground. But they don't disappear; they nourish the earth, they leave their mark on our hands and we bring our fingers to our lips and we are refreshed. That's what every poem in this book is: a kiss, welcome and needed, on our lips. Each poem is a trace of time, of memory, of love, of friendship, of rage, of remembering, of forgetting, of a night in celebration and of a day in mourning.

This "healing" book plunges the reader in a world full of sea, colours, light and cool breeze that portray the many facets of Greek life, and at the same time gives simple, every day, apparently unimportant facts their real value. "Whoever derives pleasure from small things always wins the lottery in life", says the aged heroine who, born in the midst of the Smyrna Disaster of 1922, was rescued from the flames and brought to live in one of the Aegean islands where she found a second home and a loving family. As she spins out for us the difficulties she has had to face in her life, she initiates us to the most difficult art of all, the art of living. A precious initiation in our times of stress and alienation

The Roman invasion from the western seas is imminent, and from the south the Spartans are burning and pillaging their way north. Battle-hardened Philopoemen believes the Achean League is facing annihilation if it does not arm. But without a formal army or cavalry, they don't stand a chance. Convincing his friend and healer Alexanor that the threat is real, together they begin to build a massive cavalry guard from the ground up - one that will fight on all fronts. It is the last roll of the dice for the Achean League. But Alexanor knows Philopoemen is one of the greatest warriors Greece has ever known - the New Achilles. The Last Greek.

Thessaloniki 1942. Vasilis Tsitsanis, the last outstanding performer of rebetiko music opens an ouzo tasting bar, an ouzeri, in the centre of the city. It soon attracts lovers of rebetiko, police officers, black market traffickers, spies, informants and anonymous partisan fighters. The centuries old city is living out its last days. The German occupying forces have set in motion the deportation of the large Jewish Sephardic community, represented by Estrella, a young girl enrolled in the resistance and the love object of the narrator of the novel. As it experiences its most difficult and decisive period in its history, the fascinating mosaic of Thessaloniki springs to life from the pages of Skambardonis’s novel. A mosaic made up of rebetiko, intrigue, love and betrayal set against the backdrop of a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic city which is on the verge of changing for ever.

Une étude sur une trentaine d'oeuvres du Musée du Louvre qui ont pour point commun de représenter des scènes de meurtre. Le spécialiste présente pour chaque cas la nature du crime, historique ou mythologique, les protagonistes et les enjeux historiques.

'An evocative mix of history, food and storytelling.' EVENING STANDARD BEST FICTION 2021'a heart-warming, heart-breaking story of love, life, family and, of course, baking.' RUTH HOGANCyprus in the run up to the civil war of the 1970s... the threat of it hangs in the atmosphere like a fine mist. A terrible thing, war. Against this backdrop of war and violence, the island's inhabitants make the best they can of their lives, building friendships, falling in love, having children, watching people die, making mistakes. Maria Petrakis, however, flees a brutal marriage on the island where she has always lived for London and a new start. She opens a bakery on Green Lanes in Harringay - the centre of the small Greek Cypriot community whose residents have settled there to escape the war and start again. Here she comes into her own as she heals and atones through the kneading of bread and the selling of shamali cakes and cinnamon pastries to her customers. There are glimpses of the lives of her neighbours, friends and customers as they buy their bread and cakes. There's Mrs Koutsouli, whose heart was broken when her handsome son married a xeni, an English woman with fish-eyes and yellow hair. There's Mrs Pantelis, driven half-mad with the grief of losing her son, Nico, in the war. And there's Mrs Vasili who claims to be related to Nana Mouskouri and grows her hair upwards so she can feel closer to God. Finally, there's Elena, Maria Petrakis' daughter-in-law, who has been suffering with the blackness since having a baby, and whom nobody knows quite how to help. The Making Of Mrs Petrakis is a story about the limited choices women sometimes find themselves confronting. It's a story about repression and mental illness and the devastation it can wreak on lives. But above all, it is a story of motherhood and love and of healing through the humble act of baking.

Nicolaos, Classical Athens's favorite sleuth, and his partner in investigation, the clever priestess Diotima, have taken time off to come home and get married. But hoping to get hitched without a hitch proves overly optimistic: A skull discovered in a cave near the Sanctuary of Artemis, the ancient world's most famous school for girls, is revealed to be the remains of the Hippias, the reviled last tyrant to rule Athens. The Athenians fought the Battle of Marathon to keep this man out of power; he was supposed to have died thirty years ago, in faraway Persia. What are his remains doing outside the city walls? Nico's boss, the great Athenian statesman Pericles, wants answers, and he orders Nico to find them. Worst of all, one of the two Sanctuary students who discovered the skull has been killed, and the other is missing. Can the sleuths solve the interlocked crimes before their wedding?

"Vassa Solomou Xanthaki's novella The Marriage is considered to be a small classic of Greek literature, a work that is distinguished by the immediacy and freshness of its language while retaining a deep sensibility to traditional life in rural Greece. First published in 1975, it has been reprinted in Greek numerous times and is included in the esteemed Apostolidis Anthology, a collection of the best Greek narrative writing from the 19th century until the present day. In 1994 it was staged as a play with enormous success by the Thessalian Theatre Company, and went on to be performed throughout Greece, with a two-year run in Athens and tours to Cyprus and in the Balkans. The Marriage has also been published in German, Spanish, and Polish, and shortly will appear in French. The author writes: 'The subject of this book is simple: the wedding customs and songs of the village of Ambelakia in Thessaly as lived and experienced in one particular marriage, that of Lenaki and Nikolas. But after the weeklong wedding ceremonies are over the magical bridal veil of those days is slowly drawn back and, in unadorned contrast to those customs and celebrations, the realities of life begin to impose themselves. This fading away of enchantment together with the role played by the nuptial mystery in the subsequent course of the couple's lives was my ultimate theme. Within the restraints imposed by the bonds of marriage I wanted to search again for the mystical veins of tradition, especially in the figure of the woman of the countryside, that ""deep-set rock"", the pillar of the race. Show more Show less "