Aiora Books

22/11/2024

🪐 Did you know 'planet' is a Greek word?

You might be surprised by just how many English words have Greek roots!

📖 Discover more in 'Myths Behind Words: Greek Mythology in English Words and Expressions'

📚 For more information, click below:

https://www.aiorabooks.com/product/myths-behind-words/

20/11/2024

📅 10 years ago this week, was awarded the European Union Prize for Literature for 'God is My Witness'

Set on the eve of the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, the novel's protagonist, 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 is My Witness' by Makis Tsitas is translated by Joshua Barley and is available now from all reputable UK bookstores and online retailers

📚 For more information, click below:

https://www.aiorabooks.com/product/god-is-my-witness/

#μαρτυσμουοθεος #βιβλίο #ΜάκηςΤσίτας

18/11/2024

Aiora Books spotted in Rhodes by 📚🇬🇷

📖 'Myths Behind Words: Greek Mythology in English Words and Expressions' is available now from all reputable UK bookstores and online retailers

📚 For more information, click below:

https://www.aiorabooks.com/product/myths-behind-words/

15/11/2024

"As you set out for Ithaca,
hope that the journey is a long one,
full of adventures, full of learning."

📖 'Selected Poems' of Cavafy is translated by David Connolly and is available now from all reputable UK bookstores and online retailers

📚 For more information, click below:

https://www.aiorabooks.com/product/c-p-cavafy-selected-poems/

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13/11/2024

"Rebetika (Songs From the Greek Underworld) edited by Katharine Butterworth & Sara Schneider: My favorite of the two, this collection curated lyrics, music, drawings of dances, glossaries (and the like), as well as essays, to give readers a sense of Greece’s “misfits,” the manges/rebetes, who were most prominent from the 20’s-50’s. The songs chronicled deal with violence, death, s*x & love, he**in addiction, hash dens, and all sorts of sordid topics. Aside from the supplemental material, the lyrics are fairly sparse, and with the original Greek on one page and its English equivalent on the next, this title is easy to breeze through. Check it out!"



📖 'Rebetika: Songs from the Old Greek Underworld' is edited by Katharine Butterworth and Sara Schneider. Available now from all reputable UK bookstores and online retailers

📚 For more information, click below:

https://www.aiorabooks.com/product/rebetika-songs-from-the-old-greek-underworld/

11/11/2024

"Had a 6 hour long boat ride today, so I decided to read some books to pass the time…

Greek Folk Tales edited by Alexander Zaphiriou: Everyone is familiar with Greek Mythology or even Aesop’s Fables, but this collection showcases other fantastical stories that explain things or teach lessons, that are often overlooked. Most of the entries in here are fairly lighthearted, even when things take a twisted turn, which makes for a fun time. It’s interesting to see the tales the narrator/storyteller inserts themselves in and the ones they don’t. Not sure if there’s a rhyme or reason. The stories with talking animals are typically shorter and more memorable. I love discovering more about a place and its people through art, and there’s no better medium than folk tales."



📖 'Greek Folk Tales' is translated by Alexander Zaphiriou and is available now from all reputable UK bookstores and online retailers

📚 For more information, click below:

https://www.aiorabooks.com/product/greek-folk-tales/

08/11/2024

Do you have the Cavafy tote bag yet?

www.aiorabooks.com to get yours!.

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06/11/2024

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

"A beautifully tragic and philosophically rich novel, The Great Chimera, to me, exemplifies literature at its finest. The story explores in depth the complexities of human desires and the inevitable disillusionments that follow.

Karagatsis masterfully weaves existential themes into a narrative that I found both engaging and profoundly moving.

The characters are vividly drawn, each representing different facets of the human experience, and the protagonist’s (Marina’s) journey is a powerful exploration of the tension between idealism and reality. The prose is elegant, often poetic, which drew me into a world where every word resonates with deeper meaning, often requiring me to stop, re-read and contemplate the deeper facets of the words on the page.

What truly stood out is the novel’s tragic beauty. As the story unfolds, its inevitable turn towards tragedy is handled with such grace that it leaves a lasting impact.

The Great Chimera is not just a story to be read but an experience that lingers long after the last page is turned.

The Great Chimera is a philosophical tragedy that showcases the power of modern Greek literature. Both profound and deeply emotional, it will be a book that will feature in one of the best books I’ve had the honour to read."

Goodreads Review

📖 'The Great Chimera' by M. Karagatsis is translated by Patricia Felisa Barbeito and is available now from all reputable UK bookstores and online retailers

📚 For more information, click below:
https://www.aiorabooks.com/product/the-great-chimera/

04/11/2024

🖋 "...Our bodies will be lost, they will fade, only this "I love you" that I whispered to you in the most secret hours will remain, until the end of time." - Nikos Engonopoulos

The principal exponent of Surrealism in Greece, member of the so-called Generation of the Thirties, Engonopoulos combined elements and iconography from a great span of Greek tradition, from mythology and antiquity to Byzantium, modern times and the contemporary period, in an unconventional fashion, in an often bitterly ironic or humorous vein.

🖼 Nikos Engonopoulos (1907 - 1985), Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletos, 1970, Donated by the Ministry of Culture and Science
📌 On view at the Corfu Annex
From

📖 'Cafés and Comets After Midnight and Other Poems' by Nikos Engonopoulos is translated by David Connolly and is available now from all reputable UK bookstores and online retailers

📚 For more information, click below:

https://www.aiorabooks.com/product/cafes-and-comets-after-midnight-and-other-poems/

01/11/2024

On the threshold of the 21st century, a new kind of literature is flourishing, attempting to change the arts landscape in Greece. Well educated and with a strong civic presence, global and with an artistic fervor, these young poets and prose writers dominate the public sphere, with their work popping up not just on magazines, small presses and websites, but on graffiti walls, in music, film and art. Narrating their hopes and fears, unfolding their dreams and expectations about the future, they certainly manage to debunk stereotypes and help form a new Greek identity. Supposing it marks the coming of a new area, one has to be confident, as Andreas Embirikos said, “we are all within our future”.

 “For poetry there exist neither large countries nor small. Its domain is in the heart of all men” Giorgos Seferis Throughout the centuries, the Greek language has been the quintessence of the Greek nation, the core of the Greek civilization and culture. It’s exactly this language, and more s...

30/10/2024

From
Identifying as either a Platonist or an Aristotelian can say a great deal about how you see the world, writes—and might also predict how happy you are about your life and future.

Plato believed that “behind the visible, material world, which is always subject to change, lies a more fundamental, invisible universe of absolutes,” Arthur C. Brooks writes. His pupil Aristotle, Brooks writes, believed that “given that the material universe was in a constant state of change—in substance, quality, quantity, and place—the change itself was part of the true nature of things.” As it applies to you, whether you believe that you are primarily being or becoming—a stagnant identity or one that’s constantly changing—determines if you are more of a Platonist or an Aristotelian.

“Arguably, given the dominance of identitarian thinking in contemporary culture, more and more people are in the former camp, because they define themselves primarily according to categories of race, religion, class, gender, or ideology,” Brooks writes. “In contrast, though their way is less in vogue, Aristotelians see themselves as moving through growth and change, encountering and developing virtue, knowledge, enlightenment, even love.”

Brooks argues that becoming more of an Aristotelian can “set you free.”

“Our culture today is likely to push you to be a Platonist—to define yourself as being a particular sort of person, with a fixed, permanent character. This is certainly convenient for businesses and political parties: It makes you a repeat customer, a reliable voter, a faithful donor."

📖 Aristotle 'On Happiness' and Plato's 'The Apology of Socrates' are both available now from all reputable UK bookstores and online retailers

📚 For more information, click below:
https://www.aiorabooks.com/product/on-happiness-nicomachean-ethics-book-x/

https://www.aiorabooks.com/product/the-apology-of-socrates/

28/10/2024

The rebetes were people living a marginal and often underworld existence on the fringes of established society, disoriented and struggling to maintain themselves in the developing industrial ports, despised and persecuted by the rest of society. And it is the hardships and suffering of these people, their fruitless dreams, their current loves and their lost loves that these songs are about, and underlying them all, their jaunty, tough will to survive.

📖 'Rebetika: Songs from the Old Greek Underworld' is edited by Katharine Butterworth and Sara Schneider. Available now from all reputable UK bookstores and online retailers

📚 For more information, click below:

https://www.aiorabooks.com/product/rebetika-songs-from-the-old-greek-underworld/

25/10/2024

🎉Ιt was on 24 October 1963 when it was announced that renowned Greek Giorgos Seferis received the Nobel Prize for .

“The distinguishing attribute of Seferis’s genius—one that he shares with Yeats and Eliot—was always his ability to make out of a local politics, out of a personal history or mythology, some sort of general statement or metaphor”, wrote in their foreword to George Seferis: Collected Poems (1995), translators Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. In the words of the Swedish Academy, Seferis’s verse symbolizes “all that is indestructible in the Hellenic acceptance of life“.“

Eminent as he is as a European poet“, wrote Rex Warner, “Seferis is preeminently a Greek poet, conscious of the tradition which shaped, and indeed created the tradition of Europe. Throughout the poetry of Seferis one will notice his profound consciousness of the presence of the past and its weight“.

Greek News Agenda

📖 'Novel and Other Poems' by George Seferis is translated by Roderick Beaton and is available now from all reputable UK bookstores and online retailers

📚 For more information, click below:

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23/10/2024

"This book is nearly 400 pages long and I finished it in just under 2 weeks. I’m not a fast reader at all, so this should already give you a fairly good idea of how enthralled I was by its story.

The plot follows Marina, originally from Rouen, and her, let’s say, less-than-ideal upbringing. After experiencing numerous hardships growing up, including the death of her father, and nearly giving up on life and love, she meets Yiannis Reizis, captain of the "Chimera“. They pretty much instantly fall for each other and Marina follows him to his home on the Greek island of Syros.

Marina had a lifelong obsession with Greece, particularly Ancient Greece, and frequently recites classic plays in the original Ancient Greek. But reader beware, this is a modern Greek tragedy and Marina’s life will take a turn for the worst and then for the much, much worse.

Tragedies are interesting because I feel that they have really fallen out of favour. Decades of Hollywood dominance have conditioned us to always yearn for a happy ending. But isn’t it in suffering that we truly confront life? I personally have always had an affinity for tragic stories and this one certainly did not pull its punches. Just when you think the pain of these characters couldn’t possibly get any greater, Karagatsis almost gleefully proves you wrong.

Karagatsis‘ writing style is lyrical to say the least. There are entire sections in this book that read like long prose poems and this will certainly not be up everyone’s street–but, perhaps unsurprisingly, it very much resonated with me. The author also heavily makes use of Greece’s rich mythological pantheon and if that’s something you’re into, you’re going to have a field day with this story.

While reading, I couldn’t help but think of some other all-time favourite books of mine: Madame Bovary by Flaubert, Antigone by Anouilh, and particularly also Un homme à distance by Katherine Pancol. Love at its most violent, love driven to the outer limits of what a human heart was made to bear: this is the source from which great artistic brilliance can spring, and Karagatsis will quench your thirst beyond satisfaction."

16/10/2024

"A month after reports revealed that the birthplace of Greek novelist Elias Venezis in Ayvalik, Turkey, was in a state of near collapse, restoration work has begun.

The property, where Venezis lived until he was 18, has long held symbolic importance for the Greek community of Asia Minor.

Prompted by media coverage in both Greek and Turkish media, as well as pressure from local authorities, the private owner has started significant repairs. The roof of the historic house has been restored and work on the wooden frame of the upper floor, resting on the stone ground floor, is advancing.

Born in 1904, Venezis is celebrated for works like “Number 31328” and “Land of Aeolia,” which reflect the experiences of the Greek community in Asia Minor."

From Kathimerini

📖 'Serenity' by Ilias Venezis is translated by Joshua Barley and is available now from all reputable UK bookstores and online retailers

📚 For more information, click below:

https://www.aiorabooks.com/product/serenity/

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14/10/2024

“What in English is the sun god is, in Greek, the everyday word for the sun. Greek seemed to exalt the everyday,” Mary Norris writes in

📖 Discover more Greek roots in "Myths Behind Words: Greek Mythology in English Words and Expressions." Available now from all reputable UK bookstores and online retailers

📚 For more information, click below:

https://www.aiorabooks.com/product/myths-behind-words/

09/10/2024

In anticipation of tomorrow's Nobel Prize for Literature announcement, we return to the words of Patti Smith on Nobel Laureate, Odysseus Elytis

This is
my Sunday read,
a luminous little
book containing
a beautiful poets
beautiful words.
He believed that
poetry should
permit the
breath of
Immortality.
Blessed is
the air
it breeds.




📖 ‘In the Name of Luminosity and Transparency’ by Odysseus Elytis.

📚 To join the Patti Book Club, click below:

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07/10/2024

For book lovers in Athens

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📖 'Greek Folk Tales' is translated by Alexander Zaphiriou and is available now from all reputable UK bookstores and online retailers

📚 For more information, click below:

https://www.aiorabooks.com/product/greek-folk-tales/