Books - The Rough Guide to Greece - page 799

Maze is a darker-shaded, more successful novel concerning
the Asia Minor Catastrophe. More recent works include The
Birthday Party , based on events in the life of Aristotle
Onassis and daughter Christina, and The Convent , a gentle
whodunnit with nuns.
Nikos Kazantzakis Zorba the Greek; The Last Temptation of
Christ; Christ Recrucified/The Greek Passion; Freedom and
Death ; The Fratricides; Report to Greco . Kazantzakis can be
hard going, yet the power of his writing shines through.
Zorba the Greek is a dark, nihilistic work, worlds away from
the two-dimensional film. By contrast, the movie version of
The Last Temptation of Christ - specifically Jesus's vision,
once crucified, of a normal life with Mary Magdalene -
provoked riots among Orthodox fanatics in Athens in 1989.
Christ Recrucified ( The Greek Passion ) resets the Easter drama
against the backdrop of Christian/Muslim relations, while
Freedom and Death, perhaps his most approachable,

chronicles the rebellions of nineteenth-century Crete. The
Fratricides portrays a family riven by the civil war. Report to
Greco is an autobiographical exploration of his Cretan-ness.
Artemis Leontis (ed) Greece: A Traveler's Literary
Companion . A nice idea, brilliantly executed: various
regions of the country as portrayed in (very) short fiction or
essays by modern Greek writers.
Alexandros Papadiamantis Tales from a Greek Island;
The Murderess . The island is Skiáthos, Papadiamantis'
birthplace. These quasi-mythic tales of grim fate come
from a nineteenth-century writer (“the inventor of modern
Greek fiction”) comparable to Hardy and Maupassant.
Ì Dido Sotiriou Farewell Anatolia . A perennial favourite
since publication in 1962, this chronicles the traumatic end
of Greek life in Asia Minor, from World War I to the 1922
catastrophe, as narrated by a fictionalized version of
Sotiriou's father.

ANCIENT GREECE
A.R. Burn Penguin History of Greece . A classic account;
packed and informative on everything from philosophy to
military history.
Ì Walter Burkert Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical .
Superb overview of deities and their attributes and
antecedents, the protocol of sacrifice and the symbolism of
festivals. Especially good on relating Greek worship to its
predecessors in the Middle East.
Paul Cartledge Cambridge Illustrated History of Ancient

Greece or Ancient Greece: A Very Short Introduction . Two
excellent general introductions to ancient Greece; choose
between brief paperback or large illustrated tome.
Paul Cartledge Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New
Past . An evocative, meticulous and accessible biography,
stinting neither on the man's brutality nor his
achievements.
James Davidson Courtesans and Fishcakes . Absorbing
book on the politics, class characteristics and etiquette of

THE CLASSICS
Many of the classics make excellent companions for a trip around Greece; reading Homer's
Odyssey when battling the vagaries of island ferries puts your own plight into perspective.
Most of these good beginners' choices are published in a range of paperback editions.
Particularly outstanding translations are noted.
Ì Mary Beard and John Henderson The Classics:
A Very Short Introduction . Exactly as it promises: an
excellent overview.
Herodotus The Histories . Revered as the father of
narrative history - and anthropology - this fifth-
century BC Anatolian writer chronicled both the causes
and campaigns of the Persian Wars, as well as the
assorted tribes and nations inhabiting Asia Minor.
Ì Homer The Iliad and The Odyssey . The first concerns
itself, semi-factually, with the late Bronze Age war of
the Achaeans against Troy in Asia Minor; the second
recounts the hero Odysseus's long journey home, via
seemingly every corner of the Mediterranean. The best
prose translations are by Martin Hammond, and in
verse Richmond Lattimore. For a stirring if very loose
verse Iliad , try also Christopher Logue's recent version,
War Music .
Ovid The Metamorphoses . Ovid was a first-century AD

Roman poet, but his masterpiece includes accessible
renditions of the more piquant Greek myths, involving
transformations as divine blessing or curse. Excellent verse
translation by David Raeburn; prose version A.D. Melville.
Pausanias The Guide to Greece . Effectively the first-ever
guidebook, intended for Roman pilgrims to central
mainland and Peloponnesian sanctuaries. Invaluable for
later archeologists in assessing damage or change to
temples over time, or (in some cases) locating them at all.
The two-volume Penguin edition is usefully annotated
with the later history and nomenclature of the sites.
Ì Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War . Bleak
month-by-month account of the conflict, by a cashiered
Athenian officer whose affiliation and dim view of
human nature didn't usually obscure his objectivity.
Xenophon The History of My Times . Thucydides'
account of the Peloponnesian War stops in 411 BC; this
eyewitness account continues events until 362 BC.