Modern Greek literature through a translator's lens

Victoria Hislop, Panos Karnezis, Patricia Barbeito, David Ricks, and Roderick Beaton discuss issues of translating Modern Greek literature: what their work – as authors and academics – has in common, and how it differs. This event is being held in collaboration with the British School at Athens and Aiora Press with the generous support of the Creative Europe programme.

Victoria Hislop

Victoria Hislop is author of five novels with Mediterranean settings all of which have held the Number One slot in the UK.  Her works have been translated into more than thirty-five languages and have sold ten million copies worldwide.  In China, France, Greece, Israel and Norway they have been bestsellers and Victoria has travelled in those countries and many others to give presentations.  Her novel, The Island, was made into a 26-episode television serial in Greece, and Victoria acted as script consultant.  She has recently had her first work of translation, a short story by Cavafy, published in “Found in Translation”, a collection of the best short stories from around the world.

Victoria read English at Oxford and was recently awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Sheffield.  She worked in publishing, PR and journalism before becoming a novelist, speaks fluent French and competent Greek.

Panos Karnezis

Panos Karnezis was born in Greece and came to the UK in 1992. A graduate of UEA’s MA in Creative Writing, he is the author of a collection of stories, Little Infamies (2002), and four novels: The Maze (shortlisted for the 2004 Whitbread First Novel Award), The Birthday Party(2007), The Convent (2010) and The Fugitives (2015). His next novel, We Are Made of Earth, will be published in September 2019.

Professor Patricia Barbeito

Patricia Felisa Barbeito is Professor of American Literatures and Interim Associate Provost and Dean of Faculty at the Rhode Island School of Design.  She  has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University focusing on race and ethnicity in American literature and is a translator of Greek fiction and poetry. In addition to her publications on African-American literature and Mediterranean noir, her translations include Menis Koumandareas’s Their Smell Makes Me Want to Cry (Birmingham Modern Greek Translations, 2004); Elias Maglinis’s The Interrogation (Birmingham Modern Greek Translations, 2013), was short-listed for the 2014 Greek National Translation Award and granted the 2013 Modern Greek Studies Association’s Constantinides Memorial Translation Prize; and most recently Averoff: Portrait of the Politician as a Young Man (Peter Lang, Byzantine and Neohellenic Studies, 2018). Her translation of M. Karagatsis's The Great Chimera is forthcoming from Aiora Press.

Professor David Ricks

David Ricks is Professor of Modern Greek and Comparative Literature at King’s College London, where he has taught for thirty years. His anthology of translations, Modern Greek Writing, appeared in 2003, and his own translations, from the Byzantine heroic lays of the twelfth century to Michalis Ganas and Nasos Vayenas today, have appeared in various magazines and anthologies. Most recently he co-edited with Peter Mackridge the volume in the BSA series, The British Council and Anglo-Greek Literary Interactions, 1945-1955, which appeared in 2018.

Professor Roderick Beaton

Roderick Beaton is Emeritus Koraes Professor of Modern Greek & Byzantine History, Language & Literature at King’s College London. He grew up in Edinburgh where he first studied Latin and ancient Greek before going on to Peterhouse, Cambridge, to graduate with a BA in English Literature and a PhD in Modern Greek. He came to King’s in 1981 as Lecturer in Modern Greek Language and Literature, and in 1988 was appointed to the Koraes Chair. For ten years he headed the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies (whose functions since 2015 have been taken over by the Department of Classics), and served as Director of the Centre for Hellenic Studies from 2012 until his retirement in 2018.

This event is free and open to all to attend. Registration is required. 

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