CULTURE

Literary events for your diary

The European Year of Languages 2001 is drawing to a close, but there are still some interesting events connected with it. A three-day conference on Modern Greek Dialects and Idiolects of Imvros, Tenedos, Asia Minor and Pontos starts today at 10 a.m. in the Athens Academy Mansion East Room at 28 Panepistimiou. The conference is being run by the Center for the Compilation of the Athens Academy’s Historical Dictionary and the Modern Greek Dialectology Society in honor of Georgios N. Hatzidakis. Athens Academy President Nikolaos Konomis will open the conference and read a message from Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomaios. Today’s speakers will refer to Hatzidakis and his work on the historical dictionary and on Modern Greek dialects. Five new writers Next in the National Book Center’s discussion series: Five Fiction Writers of the New Generation Present Themselves. Meet writers Vassiliki Kappa, Pantelis Kontoyiannis, Fani Papageorgiou, Vangelis Hatziyiannidis and Christos Chrysopoulos in the Arena Room of the National Book Center on Monday, December 10, at 8 p.m., 4 Athanasiou Diakou, third floor (Acropolis Metro station). Minimalism is an apposite appellation in more than one sense, given the volume’s brevity. With approximately 50 pages of actual text, and many of those only partly filled, it is not certain that Foreign Territory reaches book-threshold at all, however engaging many of the pieces undoubtedly are. And given the many, glowing reviews on the back cover, one wonders if too much fulsome praise can almost work to a collection’s detriment, particularly one that otherwise, rightly and quite openly, is making a statement about less being more. It’s great that it’s so good; but the publishers might let us discover some of it for ourselves, and next time, please give us a little more for our $9.95.

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