This week, our editors take us to Greece and France, where they find exciting projects at the National Library, urgent new poetry in translation, and theater adaptations. From the Afro Greek experience to new takes on the work of Annie Ernaux, read on to find out more!
Christina Chatzitheodorou, Editor-at-Large, reporting on Greece
The National Library of Greece (NLG) is currently displaying the fruits of their project “We, the Afro-Greeks: black literature as a cultural bridge.” Until the end of April, the Library will be displaying new books by authors of African origin that focus on themes of immigration and racism—additions enabled by this project. This comes after a few initiatives by and for Afro-Greeks that engage with the lived experience of Black people in Greece. The term “Afro-Greek” itself, as Adéọlá Naomi Adérè̩mí explains, is relatively new: “We started using it around 2015 to 2017 as a term to express the experience of being Black and raised or born in Greece, of having our formative years in Greece and identifying as Greek citizens legally and culturally. We are Greek and African.”
In other news, new translations continue to bring Greece into closer contact with literature from around the world. Topos Editions, on the occasion of the recent publication—for the first time in Greek—of William S. Burroughs’ West Countries, are organizing an event to pay tribute to his writing. The discussion will take place on Friday, March 22 at the Kobrai bookstore in Exarcheia, Athens. Discussants are the writer and journalist Christos Natsis, the writer and translator George-Ikaros Babasakis, and the translator of Burroughs’ books, George Metsos. The author and publisher Aris Maragopoulos will be the moderator of the discussion.
Palestinian poet Nazwan Darwish’s new poetry collection, Ι Kourasi ton Kourasmenon, translated by the well-known Arabic translator Persa Koumoutsi, has just been published by Nikas Editions as part of their new Contemporary Arab Poets series. The collection is shockingly timely given the genocide taking place in Gaza for the last 160 days. One of the poems included in the edition, “We Never Stop” reads:
I have no country to be banished from,
no country to return to:
I’ll die if I stop, I’ll die if I keep going.
In Greek:
Δεν έχω πατρίδα για να εξοριστώ
Δεν έχω πατρίδα να επιστρέψω:
Κι αν σταματήσω σε μια χώρα, θα πεθάνω.
Kathryn Raver, Assistant Managing Editor, reporting from France
French author Annie Ernaux has long been lauded for her unflinching portrayals of lives deeply affected by class, gender, and struggle. Her writing has earned her much acclaim, perhaps the most significant being her reception of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022.
Recently, one of Ernaux’s renowned novels has received further praise—not only on the page, but on the stage. L’événement, originally published in 2000, told the story of Ernaux’s tumultuous and emotional journey as she sought an abortion in the 1960s, a time when the practice was illegal, and clandestine alternatives were highly dangerous. Now, at a time when the right to abortion is being fiercely debated in countries the world over, French actress Marianne Basler has opted to bring Ernaux’s story back into the spotlight, following a 2021 film adaptation.
Basler breathes new life into Ernaux’s testimony, embodying all of the courage, pain, and unyielding honesty that the original text imbued into its pages. This play also comes at an especially poignant moment in French history, as France just recently became the first country in the world to make abortion a constitutional right. Basler’s performance takes us back to when the idea of this newfound liberty was unthinkable, serving as a necessary reminder that there are many who did not, and still do not, share this freedom.
This adaptation is not alone in its attempt to call attention to the various violences that women face. It comes alongside upcoming titles such as Emma Marsantes’s Les fous sont des joueurs de flûte and Elitza Gueorguieva’s Odyssée des filles de l’Est, which tell the stories of women fighting for liberation from the oft dangerous limitations—from internal prejudice to physical violence—inflicted on them.
Basler’s adaptation of L’événement will run at the Théâtre de l’Atelier until March 27.
*****
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