Greek, made learnable

European literature begins here, and begins as song rather than writing. Homer’s two epics are the foundation everything later was built on, the modern novel included.

• Ἰλιάς

  Iliás · Iliad

  Ὅμηρος Homer · TCN ~750

  It does not tell the Trojan war but one man’s anger over a few weeks. That choice of scope taught Western literature how to tell a story.

• Ὀδύσσεια

  Odýsseia · Odyssey

  Ὅμηρος Homer · TCN ~720

  A homecoming that takes ten years. Its structure — leaving, losing the way, returning changed — is still the shape of countless stories.

• Ποιήματα

  Poiímata · Fragments

  Σαπφώ Sappho · TCN ~600

  From the island of Lesbos. Almost all of it is lost and only fragments survive — but those fragments are Europe’s earliest and most direct love poetry.

• Θεογονία

  Theogonía

  Ἡσίοδος Hesiod · TCN ~700

  Where the Greek gods came from, in order, starting with a gap. The nearest thing Greece has to a book of Genesis.

• Ἔργα καὶ Ἡμέραι

  Érga kai Hēmérai

  Ἡσίοδος Hesiod · TCN ~700

  A farmer lectures his lazy brother about work, honest dealing and when to plough. The first European poem about ordinary labour.

• Ἐλεγεῖαι

  Elegeîai

  Ἀρχίλοχος Archilochus · TCN ~650

  A mercenary cheerfully admits throwing away his shield to run from a battle. The first surviving Greek poet to say I and mean himself.

• Παρθένεια

  Parthéneia

  Ἀλκμάν Alcman · TCN ~630

  Songs written for choirs of Spartan girls to sing about each other, and the earliest large piece of Greek lyric we still have.

• Ποιήματα τοῦ Ἀλκαίου

  Poiḗmata toû Alkaíou

  Ἀλκαῖος Alcaeus · TCN ~600

  Politics, exile and wine, by Sappho's neighbour on Lesbos. He invented the stanza Horace would later borrow for Latin.

• Ὁμηρικοὶ Ὕμνοι

  Homērikoì Hýmnoi

  Ἀνώνυμοι · khuyết danh · TCN ~600

  Hymns to individual gods, not by Homer, including the story of Demeter losing her daughter to the underworld.

• Μῦθοι

  Mŷthoi

  Αἴσωπος Aesop · TCN ~560

  Fables told by a slave, in which the weak animal usually wins by thinking. Translated into more languages than almost anything else Greek.

• Ποιήματα τοῦ Ἀνακρέοντος

  Poiḗmata toû Anakréontos

  Ἀνακρέων Anacreon · TCN ~530

  Short poems about wine, boys and getting old, light enough that Europe spent two thousand years imitating them badly.

• Ἐπινίκια

  Epiníkia

  Πίνδαρος Pindar · TCN ~470

  Odes commissioned to celebrate athletic victories, and so difficult that pindaric still means writing nobody can follow.

Athenian tragedy was performed at a religious competition before thousands of citizens. It was art and civic life at once — a city arguing with itself on stage.

• Οἰδίπους Τύραννος

  Oidípous Týrannos

  Σοφοκλῆς Sophocles · TCN ~429

  A man investigates a crime and discovers he is the criminal. Aristotle built his entire theory of tragedy on this play.

• Μήδεια

  Mídeia · Medea

  Εὐριπίδης Euripides · TCN 431

  A foreign woman betrayed by her husband takes a revenge that leaves an audience unable to take a side. Still staged constantly.

• Συμπόσιον

  Sympósion · Symposium

  Πλάτων Plato · TCN ~385

  Philosophy written as drama: men at a drinking party take turns defining love. It reads as literature rather than treatise.

• Ὀρέστεια

  Oresteía

  Αἰσχύλος Aeschylus · TCN 458

  Three plays in which a family kills its way through three generations until a court is invented to stop them. The only complete Greek trilogy left.

• Προμηθεὺς Δεσμώτης

  Promētheùs Desmṓtēs

  Αἰσχύλος Aeschylus · TCN ~460

  A god is chained to a rock for giving fire to humans and spends the whole play refusing to apologise. The founding text of European rebellion.

• Ἀντιγόνη

  Antigónē

  Σοφοκλῆς Sophocles · TCN 441

  A woman buries her brother against the king's order and both of them are right. Staged during every occupation Europe has had since.

• Βάκχαι

  Bákchai

  Εὐριπίδης Euripides · TCN 405

  A king refuses to admit a god and is torn apart by his own mother. Written in exile and staged after the author was dead.

• Νεφέλαι

  Nephélai

  Ἀριστοφάνης Aristophanes · TCN 423

  Socrates is shown hanging in a basket teaching students to argue their way out of debts. Plato said the play helped get him executed.

• Ὄρνιθες

  Órnithes

  Ἀριστοφάνης Aristophanes · TCN 414

  Two Athenians give up on the city and persuade the birds to build one in the sky, then blockade the gods into surrender.

• Λυσιστράτη

  Lysistrátē

  Ἀριστοφάνης Aristophanes · TCN 411

  The women of Greece refuse to sleep with anyone until the men stop the war. Performed as an anti-war protest ever since.

• Βάτραχοι

  Bátrachoi

  Ἀριστοφάνης Aristophanes · TCN 405

  Dionysus goes to the underworld to bring back a tragedian, and holds a contest to decide which one. Literary criticism as a comedy.

• Ἱστορίαι

  Historíai

  Ἡρόδοτος Herodotus · TCN ~430

  An inquiry into why Greeks and Persians fought, which keeps stopping to describe Egypt, Scythia and anything else that interested him.

• Ἱστορία τοῦ Πελοποννησιακοῦ Πολέμου

  Historía toû Peloponnēsiakoû Polémou

  Θουκυδίδης Thucydides · TCN ~400

  A general writes up the war he lost, with no gods in it at all, and states that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

• Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους

  Apología Sōkrátous

  Πλάτων Plato · TCN ~399

  A seventy-year-old defends himself at his own trial by annoying the jury, and is sentenced to death. The unexamined life is in here.

• Ἀνάβασις

  Anábasis

  Ξενοφῶν Xenophon · TCN ~370

  Ten thousand Greek mercenaries are stranded deep in Persia and walk home. The moment they see the sea is one of the great scenes in prose.

• Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια

  Ēthikà Nikomácheia

  Ἀριστοτέλης Aristotle · TCN ~340

  What a good life is, argued on the basis that virtue is a habit you practise rather than a rule you obey.

• Ποιητική

  Poiētikḗ

  Ἀριστοτέλης Aristotle · TCN ~335

  Lecture notes on how tragedy works, and the source of nearly every term screenwriters still use. The half about comedy is lost.

After Alexander, Greek became the common language of the eastern Mediterranean — which is why the New Testament is written in it. Byzantium then kept Greek alive for another thousand years.

• Καινὴ Διαθήκη

  Kainí Diathíki · New Testament

  Nhiều tác giả · CN 50–120

  Written in koine, the everyday Greek rather than the literary kind. That plainness is part of why it spread so fast.

• Διγενῆς Ἀκρίτας

  Digenís Akrítas

  Khuyết danh · CN ~1100

  The Byzantine epic of a border guardian born of two peoples. The first major work in a Greek close to ordinary speech.

• Ἑβδομήκοντα

  Hebdomḗkonta · Septuagint

  Ἑβδομήκοντα μεταφραστές các dịch giả · TCN ~250

  The Hebrew scriptures translated into Greek in Alexandria, the first large translation project in history and the Bible the apostles quoted.

• Εἰδύλλια

  Eidýllia

  Θεόκριτος Theocritus · TCN ~270

  City poems about shepherds singing competitions in Sicily. Pastoral poetry starts here and runs straight through to the Renaissance.

• Ἀργοναυτικά

  Argonautiká

  Ἀπολλώνιος Ῥόδιος Apollonius of Rhodes · TCN ~250

  Jason and the golden fleece, told by a librarian, and the first epic more interested in a woman falling in love than in the fighting.

• Παράλληλοι Βίοι

  Parállēloi Bíoi

  Πλούταρχος Plutarch · CN ~100

  Greek and Roman lives paired off and compared. Shakespeare took three plays almost verbatim from the English translation.

• Ἀληθὴς Ἱστορία

  Alēthḕs Historía

  Λουκιανός Lucian · CN ~170

  A voyage to the moon and a war between its king and the sun, announced in the first paragraph as entirely lies. The first science fiction, and a joke.

• Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν

  Tà eis heautón

  Μᾶρκος Αὐρήλιος Marcus Aurelius · CN ~175

  A Roman emperor writes notes to himself in Greek, on campaign, reminding himself that he will die and that most of it does not matter.

• Δάφνις καὶ Χλόη

  Dáphnis kaì Chlóē

  Λόγγος Longus · CN ~200

  Two foundlings raised by shepherds fall in love and cannot work out what to do about it. One of the earliest novels anywhere.

• Αἰθιοπικά

  Aithiopiká

  Ἡλιόδωρος Heliodorus · CN ~250

  A novel that opens in the middle of the action with no explanation, a technique European fiction did not attempt again for a very long time.

• Κοντάκια

  Kontákia

  Ῥωμανὸς ὁ Μελωδός Romanos the Melodist · CN ~540

  Sung sermons in which Mary and the angels argue in dialogue. The greatest Byzantine poet, and a Syrian who wrote in his second language.

• Ἀκάθιστος Ὕμνος

  Akáthistos Hýmnos

  Ἀνώνυμος · khuyết danh · CN ~626

  A hymn to the Virgin sung standing, traditionally in thanks for Constantinople surviving a siege. Still sung every Lent.

• Χρονογραφία

  Chronographía

  Μιχαὴλ Ψελλός Michael Psellos · CN ~1078

  A courtier's account of fourteen emperors he mostly served and privately despised. Byzantine history with gossip and a very sharp eye.

• Ἀλεξιάς

  Alexiás

  Ἄννα Κομνηνή Anna Komnene · CN ~1148

  A princess writes the life of her father the emperor, including the arrival of the First Crusade. The first major history in Europe written by a woman.

While most of the Greek world lay under Ottoman rule, Venetian Crete had a literary flowering of its own. Meanwhile oral folk song kept the language alive everywhere else for four centuries.

• Ἐρωτόκριτος

  Erotókritos

  Βιτσέντζος Κορνάρος Kornaros · ~1600

  A verse romance of over ten thousand lines in Cretan Greek. It was still being sung in Cretan villages into the twentieth century.

• Δημοτικά τραγούδια

  Dimotiká tragoúdia

  Truyền miệng · 1500–1900

  Folk songs of the frontier, of mourning, of exile. Modern poets return to them whenever they want a genuinely Greek voice.

• Ἡ Θυσία τοῦ Ἀβραάμ

  I Thysía tou Avraám

  Βιτσέντζος Κορνάρος Kornaros (đề tặng) · ~1635

  Abraham told to kill his son, played not as a test of faith but as a domestic scene between two parents. Eleven hundred lines.

• Ἐρωφίλη

  Erofíli

  Γεώργιος Χορτάτσης Chortatsis · ~1600

  A princess secretly marries below her rank and her father sends her his husband's heart. Cretan tragedy at full Renaissance strength.

• Ὁ Κατζοῦρμπος

  O Katzoúrbos

  Γεώργιος Χορτάτσης Chortatsis · ~1600

  A comedy of mistaken identity in the streets of Candia, with a boastful soldier and a scheming servant lifted straight from Italian models.

• Ὁ Φορτουνᾶτος

  O Fortounátos

  Μάρκος Ἀντώνιος Φώσκολος Foskolos · 1655

  Written inside Candia while the Ottomans were besieging it, and still a comedy. The last work of the Cretan Renaissance.

• Ἡ Βοσκοπούλα

  I Voskopoúla

  Ἀνώνυμος · khuyết danh · ~1600

  A shepherd loves a shepherdess, loses her, and the poem stops. Short, simple and the most reprinted Cretan text of its century.

• Ὁ Ἀπόκοπος

  O Apókopos

  Μπεργαδῆς Bergadis · 1519

  A man dreams he falls into the underworld and the dead ask him for news of the living. The first Greek book ever printed as literature.

• Τοῦ νεκροῦ ἀδελφοῦ

  Tou nekroú adelfoú

  Δημοτικό · truyền miệng · ~1500

  A dead brother rises to keep a promise and bring his sister home to their mother. The same ballad exists across the Balkans, and Greece sings it best.

• Θρῆνος τῆς Κωνσταντινουπόλεως

  Thrínos tis Konstantinoupóleos

  Ἀνώνυμος · khuyết danh · ~1460

  A lament for the city fallen in 1453, and the origin of the folk belief that it will one day be Greek again.

• Ριμάδα κόρης καὶ νιοῦ

  Rimáda kóris kai nioú

  Ἀνώνυμος · khuyết danh · ~1500

  A young man and a girl argue in rhyming couplets about whether she should let him in. Popular love verse before anyone called it literature.

Independence came with an argument that lasted over a century: should one write a purified archaic Greek or the language people actually spoke? It was only settled in 1976, and every writer had to take a side.

• Ὕμνος εἰς τὴν Ἐλευθερίαν

  Ýmnos eis tin Eleftherían

  Διονύσιος Σολωμός Solomos · 1823

  Solomos wrote in the demotic, and that decided the direction of modern Greek poetry. Its first stanzas are the national anthem of both Greece and Cyprus.

• Ποιήματα

  Poiímata · Collected Poems

  Κ. Π. Καβάφης Cavafy · 1904–1933

  He lived his whole life in Alexandria, Egypt, and never published a formal collection while alive. He is now the most translated modern Greek poet.

• Ο Κρητικός

  O Kritikós

  Διονύσιος Σολωμός Solomos · 1833

  A survivor of the Cretan revolt swims through a storm carrying his dying beloved, and a vision stops the sea. Unfinished, like most of his best work.

• Ελεύθεροι Πολιορκημένοι

  Eléftheroi Poliorkiménoi

  Διονύσιος Σολωμός Solomos · ~1845

  The starving defenders of Missolonghi are tempted by spring rather than by the enemy. Surviving only in fragments, and greater for it.

• Απομνημονεύματα

  Apomnimonévmata

  Ιωάννης Μακρυγιάννης Makriyannis · 1850

  A general who taught himself to write at thirty-two sets down the revolution in the language he actually spoke. Seferis called it the finest modern Greek prose.

• Το ταξίδι μου

  To taxídi mou

  Γιάννης Ψυχάρης Psycharis · 1888

  A travel book written deliberately in the spoken language to prove it could carry serious prose. It started a language war that lasted ninety years.

• Η Φόνισσα

  I Fónissa

  Αλέξανδρος Παπαδιαμάντης Papadiamantis · 1903

  An old woman on Skiathos decides that drowning baby girls spares them the life she had. Written by a devout man, without a word of judgement.

• Ο Ζητιάνος

  O Zitiános

  Ανδρέας Καρκαβίτσας Karkavitsas · 1897

  A professional beggar arrives in a Thessalian village and systematically ruins it. Rural Greece with the folklore stripped off.

• Λόγια της πλώρης

  Lógia tis plóris

  Ανδρέας Καρκαβίτσας Karkavitsas · 1899

  Stories told by sailors on watch, collected by a ship's doctor who had heard them all first-hand.

• Ίαμβοι και Ανάπαιστοι

  Íamvoi kai Anápaistoi

  Κωστής Παλαμάς Palamas · 1897

  Short, hard poems published the year Greece lost a war badly, by the man who would write the Olympic hymn.

• Ο Δωδεκάλογος του Γύφτου

  O Dodekálogos tou Gýftou

  Κωστής Παλαμάς Palamas · 1907

  A gypsy who belongs to no nation is used to ask what a nation is for. The most ambitious long poem in modern Greek.

• Η Τιμή και το Χρήμα

  I Timí kai to Chríma

  Κωνσταντίνος Θεοτόκης Theotokis · 1912

  A Corfu family will not let a daughter marry without a dowry, and she refuses to be bought. Greek social realism, written by an aristocrat turned socialist.

• Η ζωή εν τάφω

  I zoí en táfo

  Στρατής Μυριβήλης Myrivilis · 1924

  Letters from a soldier in the trenches of the Macedonian front, revised for decades afterwards as the author's politics changed.

• Ιστορία ενός αιχμαλώτου

  Istoría enós aichmalótou

  Στρατής Δούκας Doukas · 1929

  A Greek prisoner survives in Turkey by passing as a Turk. Fifty pages, dictated by the man it happened to, and it ends by refusing to hate anyone.

• Ελεγεία και Σάτιρες

  Elegeía kai Sátires

  Κ. Γ. Καρυωτάκης Karyotakis · 1927

  Poems by a civil servant about being a civil servant, and about the pointlessness of poetry. He shot himself the next year, at thirty-one.

A small country with two Nobel Prizes in Literature within sixteen years. Twentieth-century Greek poetry was written through war, civil war and dictatorship, and it often answers the present by naming the ancient past.

• Μυθιστόρημα

  Mythistórima

  Γιώργος Σεφέρης Seferis · 1935

  Nobel laureate 1963, the first Greek. Born near Smyrna and exiled from it in 1922; that loss runs through everything he wrote.

• Τὸ Ἄξιον Ἐστί

  To Áxion Estí

  Ὀδυσσέας Ἐλύτης Elytis · 1959

  Nobel laureate 1979. A long poem shaped like an Orthodox liturgy, in praise of Aegean light and sea. Set to music, it is widely sung.

• Βίος καὶ Πολιτεία τοῦ Ἀλέξη Ζορμπᾶ

  Víos kai Politeía tou Aléxi Zorbá

  Νίκος Καζαντζάκης Kazantzakis · 1946

  The most widely read Greek novel outside Greece. Note that the syrtaki associated with the 1964 film was choreographed for it, and is not an ancient folk dance.

• Επιτάφιος

  Epitáfios

  Γιάννης Ρίτσος Ritsos · 1936

  A mother mourns a son shot by police at a tobacco workers' strike. The regime burned it publicly; Theodorakis set it to music in 1960.

• Λυρικός Βίος

  Lyrikós Víos

  Άγγελος Σικελιανός Sikelianos · 1946

  The collected work of a poet who tried to revive the Delphic festivals and believed Greece could be reborn through ritual.

• Ο Χριστός Ξανασταυρώνεται

  O Christós Xanastavrónetai

  Νίκος Καζαντζάκης Kazantzakis · 1948

  A village casts its passion play and the men chosen become their roles, just as refugees arrive needing help the village will not give.

• Ο Τελευταίος Πειρασμός

  O Teleftaíos Peirasmós

  Νίκος Καζαντζάκης Kazantzakis · 1955

  Christ on the cross imagines the ordinary life he might have had. Put on the Vatican index and denounced by the Orthodox church.

• Αναφορά στον Γκρέκο

  Anaforá ston Gréko

  Νίκος Καζαντζάκης Kazantzakis · 1961

  A life told as a report to El Greco, another Cretan who left. Published after the author's death, and not entirely factual on purpose.

• Ρωμιοσύνη

  Romiosýni

  Γιάννης Ρίτσος Ritsos · 1954

  A long poem about the stones, the dead and the stubbornness of the Greek countryside after the civil war. Everyone can recite the opening.

• Η Σονάτα του Σεληνόφωτος

  I Sonáta tou Selinófotos

  Γιάννης Ρίτσος Ritsos · 1956

  An ageing woman talks all night to a young man who never answers, asking to be let out of the house. A monologue that will not stop.

• Η Κάλπικη Λίρα

  I Kálpiki Líra

  Μ. Καραγάτσης Karagatsis · 1955

  A counterfeit gold sovereign passes through five owners and ruins each of them differently. Structure doing the work of a plot.

• Το καπλάνι της βιτρίνας

  To kaplán tis vitrínas

  Άλκη Ζέη Alki Zei · 1963

  Two sisters on a Greek island watch the Metaxas dictatorship arrive, explained through a stuffed tiger in a display case.

• Το Τρίτο Στεφάνι

  To Tríto Stefáni

  Κώστας Ταχτσής Tachtsis · 1962

  Two women talk, and forty years of Greek history arrives sideways through gossip. Self-published because no publisher would touch it.

• Ο Ήλιος ο Ηλιάτορας

  O Ílios o Iliátoras

  Οδυσσέας Ελύτης Elytis · 1971

  Short bright poems written during the colonels' dictatorship, in which refusing to be gloomy is itself the political act.

• Το Κιβώτιο

  To Kivótio

  Άρης Αλεξάνδρου Alexandrou · 1974

  A partisan writes reports explaining how he delivered an empty crate. The great Greek civil war novel, written by a man both sides imprisoned.

• Μαρία Νεφέλη

  María Neféli

  Οδυσσέας Ελύτης Elytis · 1978

  A young woman of the 1970s and an older poet speak in two columns that never quite meet. Published the year before his Nobel.

• Η αρραβωνιαστικιά του Αχιλλέα

  I arravoniastikiá tou Achilléa

  Άλκη Ζέη Alki Zei · 1987

  A woman follows the Greek left from the occupation into exile in Tashkent and back. Political history as one long unglamorous life.

• Ο βίος του Ισμαήλ Φερίκ πασά

  O víos tou Ismaíl Ferík pasá

  Ρέα Γαλανάκη Galanaki · 1989

  A Cretan boy taken to Egypt becomes an Ottoman general and is sent back to put down a Cretan revolt. By the author later given the Grand Prize for Letters.

• Η μητέρα του σκύλου

  I mitéra tou skýlou

  Παύλος Μάτεσις Matesis · 1990

  The daughter of a woman shamed for sleeping with an occupier tells the story in a voice that keeps mishearing its own words.

• Ημερολόγιο Καταστρώματος Γ΄

  Imerológio Katastrómatos G΄

  Γιώργος Σεφέρης Seferis · 1955

  Poems written in Cyprus, where the poet found a Greece that still worked. The only book he dedicated to a place.

A decade still running cannot have a settled canon, and saying so is more honest than presenting a provisional list as though it were fixed. What the books below have instead is evidence: a major prize, a wide readership, or a translation record.

• Καλά να πάθεις

  Kalá na páthis

  Χρήστος Οικονόμου Christos Ikonomou · 2020

  Short stories about those left behind by the Greek economic crisis. An austere voice.

• Τι μένει από τη νύχτα

  Ti méni apó ti nýchta

  Έρση Σωτηροπούλου Ersi Sotiropoulou · 2015

  Three days of Cavafy in Paris in 1897. Widely translated during this decade.

• Ρετροβισέρ

  Retrovisér

  Μισέλ Φάις Michel Fais · 2021

  Experimental, fragmentary prose on memory and the Jewish community of Komotini.

• Ουρανός απ' άλλους τόπους

  Ouranós ap' állous tópous

  Σωτήρης Δημητρίου Dimitriou · 2022

  State Prize for the Novel, 2022. Written in the border dialect of Epirus, which is where the author is from and what he has always written in.

• Φυγόδικος δεν ήμουν

  Fygódikos den ímoun

  Ισμήνη Καρυωτάκη Karyotaki · 2023

  State Prize for the Novel, 2023, awarded unanimously. The title translates as I was not a fugitive.

• Το όνομά σου

  To ónomá sou

  Βαγγέλης Χατζηγιαννίδης Chatzigiannidis · 2023

  State Prize for the Short Story and Novella, 2023. The title means simply your name.

• Πράσινος ουρανός, μπλε χορτάρι

  Prásinos ouranós, ble chortári

  Σταύρος Ζαφειρίου Zafeiriou · 2023

  State Prize for Poetry, 2023. The title — green sky, blue grass — is the argument.

• Ο δράκος της Πρέσπας

  O drákos tis Préspas

  Ιωάννα Μπουραζοπούλου Bourazopoulou · 2024

  State Prize for the Novel, 2024, shared. A speculative trilogy set around Lake Prespa, where three borders meet.

• Μερκάντο

  Merkádo

  Μαρία Μαμαλίγκα Mamaliga · 2024

  State Prize for the Short Story and Novella, awarded in 2026 for the 2024 publishing year.

• Όταν μας άφησε η θάλασσα

  Ótan mas áfise i thálassa

  Άννα Κουππάνου Kouppanou · 2024

  State Prize for the Young Adult Book, by a Cypriot writer. Greek-language literature is not only written in Greece.

• Ελληνικός κομμουνισμός

  Ellinikós kommounismós

  Κωστής Καρπόζηλος Karpozilos · 2024

  State Prize for Testimony, Biography and Chronicle. A history of the Greek left, and the category where Greek prizes put serious non-fiction.