Poetry and launches
Author and translator Gail Holst-Warhaft’s first and critically acclaimed foray into poetry, «Penelope’s Confessions,» will be presented in its bilingual edition by Cosmos Publications at the Ianos bookstore cafe (24 Stadiou) on Monday, October 8. The Australian-born scholar of ancient and modern Greek life, literature and music is adjunct associate professor in the departments of classics and comparative literature at Cornell University and works as a freelance writer, poet and translator. Following her studies in Australia, Holst-Warhaft came to Greece, where she worked as a musician and journalist during the 1970s. She also played harpsichord in the orchestras of Mikis Theodorakis, Dionysis Savvopoulos and Mariza Koch. Koch will be at Ianos to open the event with a recital of poems she has set to music, while poet Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke and author Iakovos Kampanellis will discuss the book and its author. The event begins at 6 p. m. and attendance is free of charge. Tomorrow at Eleftheroudakis (17 Panepistimiou), Pascal Bruckner (photo), the prolific French writer of the nouveaux philosophes school, and author of «Temptation of Innocence» and «Bitter Moon» (which was made into a film by Roman Polanski in 1992), will be signing the Greek editions of his books from 5-7 p. m. Rami Saari Israeli poet Rami Saari will also be in town this week for the presentation of his poetry collection «Under the Feet of the Rain» (published in Greek by Oxy), at Patakis (65 Academias) at 7 p. m. tomorrow. Saari studied and taught Semitic and Uralic languages at the universities of Helsinki, Budapest and Jerusalem and got his PhD in linguistics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. By January 2006 Saari had published seven books and translated more than 40 books, both prose and poetry, from Albanian, Estonian, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Portuguese and Spanish into Hebrew. He has been awarded the Prime Minister’s Prize for Literature twice (1996, 2003), and the Tchernikhovsky Prize for his translations (2006). On Tuesday, October 9, Benaki Museum director Angelos Delivorias, writer Philippos Drakontaidis and Athens University professor Giorgos Maniatis will present A-I. D. Metaxas’s new book «Ypainiktika Portreta» (Suggestive Portraits: The Imperceptible Depiction of Authority). The presentation will begin at 8 p. m. at the Benaki (1 Koumbari & Vassilissis Sofias, Kolonaki).
