Modern Greek Literature

[Mr.lucifer]

I was wondering if there any modern greek texts worth reading. Any recommendations?

[Kyriakos]

Some.

The complete poems by Constantine Cavafy. You can find most of them at cavafy.com in english.

The murderess, by Alexander Papadiamantis. I think Penguin has an edition of it in english.

Then there are some more, but i don't know if they have been translated... But those two won't disappoint.

[mortalterror]

I second Cavafy. He's a real talent like Rilke or Yeats. Read his poems The Horses of Achilles, Ithaka, and Waiting For the Barbarians. http://cavafy.com/ has really good translations.

Angelos Sikelianos is alright too. I really liked his poem Agraphon.

Giorgos Seferis won the nobel prize but I don't really dig what I've read by him.

Nikos Kazantzakis is great, a majorly underrated talent. He's known for his popular novels which were made into Academy Award winning films such as Zorba The Greek, and The Last Temptation of Christ. His magnum opus is the modern epic poem The Odyssey: a modern sequel. It is at once a work of incredible genius and incredibly flawed. The style is that of the modernist novel which he was so good at. The verse is neo-classic like the work of Cavafy and other poets of the early twentieth century. It suffers from being a philosophical narrative, whereas the epic it bases itself on is one of adventure and action. Here, we are always up in Odysseus' head, the action turns inward around psychology after the manner of a realist novel. Add to it the fact that Kazantzakis' Odysseus isn't a likeable character, or any type of human being someone would recognize and the reader is bound to have empathy problems. It's a curiosity piece and at the least worth checking out.

Depending on how far you want to go back and what you consider modern there is Emmanual Royidis' book Pope Joan which was popular in Europe 150 years ago. I read a couple of pages online and it seemed alright if not particularly groundbreaking.

Then you have Dionysios Solomos if you want to go back to the Romantic era. Judging by unfinished works like The Shark, he could have been a match for Shelley or Byron if he'd written more.

Going further back still, to the dawn of modern Greek literature, you have Vitsentzos Kornaros and his Erotokritos, reputed to be the greatest work of Greek literature since ancient times. Good luck getting hold of a translation though.

[Kyriakos]

Some more options, but like i said i don't know if they have been translated to english:

Penelope Delta.

A very important novelist of the early 20th century. She mostly wrote larger works, but i have her first collection of short prose entitled "Souls of Children" and in fact in it is my favorite greek short story ("The broken violin") and one of my favorites from any author.

Constantine Karyotakis

Lived in the same period as Delta, and like her committed suicide (although Delta killed herself when the german forces entered Athens, whereas Karyotakis had more inward reasons for his action). An important poet, wrote in a style reminiscent of the italian Giacomo Leopardi.