Category: Reading Greece

🎉The Φεστιβάλ Βιβλίου Χανίων - Chania Book Festival opens its doors today and for the next five days (25-29 June) will turn the town of Chania into an international cultural and literary hub.

Themed "Our world, the planet", and with the participation of more that 160 speakers from 16 countries and 100 thematic discussions, #book presentations, workshops, performances, concerts, the Festival returns for its 4th edition through innovative actions, aspiring to become an annual institution, gathering contemporary Greek literature and intellectual thought, while also having an international character with invitations to significant foreign #authors, academics, and intellectuals.

In an era of extreme contrasts and uncertainty, #literature, essays, and #poetry — as sensitive receptors of the messages of our time — bring critical issues into the public sphere and serve as a universal thread that connects humanity, fostering connections and bridging distances. In the words of the Festival's Director, Manolis Pimplis, "This is the value of a festival. The creation of another world within the known world, the fusion of individual existential struggle with collective vision. And this has a deeper existential, social, and political significance".

For more info about the Festival's Events Programme👉https://www.chaniabookfestival.gr/en/events/

Δήμος Χανίων - Municipality of Chania

📚📚It was on 23 June 2005 that a leading poet of the first post-war generation and one of the most important poets to have emerged in Greece after World War II, Manolis Anagnostakis, passed away.

In the poet’s words, “At times I have been a purely political poet. Personally, I do not think I’m a political poet. I am an erotic and political artist at the same time. These two are combined together. It was the era that combined the two. Meaning that one couldn’t be an erotic poet while forgetting the political framework of that time when political passions were at their peak. The political element was vivid, the expression of politics through a kind of love affair, though. That’s why I deny all this about “poetry of defeat” and the like. It’s not the poetry of defeat. It’s an agony for that period of time, an anxiety about it. […] I feel poetry as a way of expressing myself because I couldn’t do it differently. Because the times had been so hard, that one only by expressing their pain could endure it”.

📚📚On the occasion of the publication of his last book "Drawing down the moon" (Ikaros, 2025), fiction writer and translator Chrysostomos Tsaprailis spoke to Reading Greece about speculative fiction and the way the legendary past is revived in contemporary settings as a way to re-enchant the world.

"Indeed, the revival of the legendary past in contemporary settings is a theme permeating my work, the ulterior goal being a sort of re-enchantment of our world. This is done by focusing on remnants of past legends and rites (be them authentic or re-imagined/invented) that evoke awe and wonder (two emotional states that are scarce in the modern world), images from my childhood, and uncanny elements of our own reality; then sieving and transforming everything through the sensibilities of my generation, and trying to organically reintegrate them in the now, ignoring the rules of cold-minded rationality. In the end, what I strive for is creating mythical versions of the world, versions which can act as sanctuaries for modern audiences disillusioned by both modernity and conservative/reactionary nostalgia".

Εκδόσεις Ίκαρος - Ikaros Publishing
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