Product Description: Peter Bien focuses on Kazantzakis' obsession with the demotic, the language "on the lips of the people," showing how it governed his writing, his ambition, and his involvement in Greek politics and educational reform. Kazantzakis' obsession worked against him in his Odyssey and found its natural vehicle only in his translation of Homer's Iliad and his novels, Zorba the Greek, The Last Temptation of Christ, and The Greek Passion...read more

Product Description: The literary renaissance of Modern Greece is the subject of essays by ten critics and scholars on the theme, "Modern Greek Literature and it European Background." From Zissimos Lorenzatos' discussion of the nineteenth- century poet Solomos to Peter Bien's analysis of Kazantznkis' fervent demoticism, they give evidence of the creative activity that has been going on as Greek writers in all genres turn outward to Europe and inward to their own culture to form a unique modern literature...read more

Product Description: Yannis Ritsos was, without question, one of the most important poets of the twentieth century. This collection of essays by Peter Bien is the first book of literary criticism in English devoted entirely to the work of Yannis Ritsos...read more

Product Description: Thirty-one years after masterful storyteller and prolific author Harry Mark Petrakis wrote the historical novel The Hour of the Bell—set in the first year of Greece's war of independence from the Turkish Empire—he now carries the narrative forward in his newest work, The Shepherds of Shadows...read more

Putting Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis's vast output into the context of his lifelong spiritual quest and the turbulent politics of twentieth-century Greece, Peter Bien argues that Kazantzakis was a deeply flawed genius--not always artistically successful, but a remarkable figure by any standard. This is the second and final volume of Bien's definitive and monumental biography of Kazantzakis (1883-1957). It covers his life after 1938, the period in which he wrote Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ, the novels that brought him his greatest fame. A demonically productive novelist, poet, playwright, travel writer, autobiographer, and translator, Kazantzakis was one of the most important Greek writers of the twentieth century and the only one to achieve international recognition as a novelist. But Kazantzakis's writings were just one aspect of an obsessive struggle with religious, political, and intellectual problems. In the 1940s and 1950s, a period that included the Greek civil war and its aftermath, Kazantzakis continued this engagement with undiminished energy, despite every obstacle, producing in his final years novels that have become world classics.

Product Description: Greek Today presents an up-to-date communicative approach for students of Modern Greek. Aimed at the introductory to intermediate levels, it is a completely revised and expanded edition of the popular Demotic Greek I. Presenting material that relates to a wide range of cultural interests, the textbook offers twelve lessons with a total of sixty grammar points, all conveyed through dialogues that present the realities experienced by young people and adults in contemporary Greece...read more

Product Description: This companion workbook contains additional exercises as well as a crossword puzzle, ideas for student compositions and dialogues, an English-language explanation of an aspect of Greek culture, a grammar review, and an exam, all aimed at inspiring students to explore the Greek world in lively and often humorous ways...read more

Product Description: This unique bilingual anthology presents the achievements of Greek poetry in the 20th century. Included are 109 poets and 456 poems, with the Greek original and the English translation on opposite pages. Included are the internationally recognized C...read more

Product Description: Although it is one of the most dynamic and controversial areas of Greek culture, Greek modernism has received little scholarly attention as a literary and cultural phenomenon. A wide variety of competing, often clashing discourses and approaches characterize the study of Greek modernism...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Popular text used by beginners worldwide.

Product Description: Integrated sequel to DEMOTIC GREEK I for second-year students uses scenarios and readings based on authentic Greek texts drawn from folktales, ballads, and writers such as Herodotus, Kazantzakis, Koraes, Myrivilis, and Seferis.