Famous at home. Unknown in English.

Greek State Prize 2025 · Shortlist

Κυμύλη ή η νήσος των δυνατοτήτων

Kymyli i i nisos ton dynatotiton

AITitle translated by AI:“Kymili, or the Island of Possibilities”

Agis Petalas

Novel · 272 pages · Satire, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:Kymili, a small Aegean island with a UNESCO-protected forest, has served for centuries as a byword for utopian hopes; its narrator guides the reader through these forgotten texts and the island's present.

Greek State Prize 2025 · Shortlist

Αυτός ο χειμώνας

Aftos o cheimonas

AITitle translated by AI:“This Winter”

Dimitris Karakitsos · 45 when first published

Novel · 184 pages · Nature

AIAI-generated summary:A man spends a whole winter as caretaker of a remote, abandoned village facing a forest, wrestling with rain, snow, wind and cold, with the things around him, and with his own memories and past.

Greek State Prize 2025 · Shortlist

Ο ήχος της σιωπής της

O ichos tis siopis tis

AITitle translated by AI:“The Sound of Her Silence”

Dimosthenis Kourtovik · 76 when first published

Novel · 304 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:After the death of his beautiful, enigmatic and emotionally guarded mother, an ageing, much-travelled son who always felt a stranger looks back on their parallel lives and tense bond from the 1950s to today.

Greek State Prize 2025 · Shortlist

Βαθύ το σκοτάδι πριν την αυγή

Vathy to skotadi prin tin avgi

AITitle translated by AI:“Deep Is the Darkness Before Dawn”

Eleni Priovolou

Novel · 416 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:Christodoulos Pamplekis, a motherless, smallpox-scarred boy from Akarnania, sees his father, an outlawed klepht, executed by the Turks and is sold as a slave before rising to become a teacher of the Greek Enlightenment.

Greek State Prize 2025 · Shortlist

Γιακαράντες

Giakarantes

AITitle translated by AI:“Jacarandas”

Fivos Oikonomidis · 27 when first published

Novel · 240 pages · Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:Dimitris Bakalbasis, a software engineer at one of the world's biggest social media companies, starts therapy for his anxiety just as more and more young people, his flatmate among them, succumb to an inexplicable exhaustion.

Greek State Prize 2025 · Shortlist

Κορνιζωμένοι

Kornizomenoi

AITitle translated by AI:“The Framed”

Ioanna Karystiani · 72 when first published

Novel · 288 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:In Krania, a provincial town so quiet that some call it Lucky, frame-maker Stelios Spougias, whose wife left him for a scientist, stays put with his framing shop for the sake of his only son, Chronis.

Greek State Prize 2025 · Shortlist

Δικά μας παιδιά

Dika mas paidia

AITitle translated by AI:“Our Own Children”

Sophia Nikolaidou

Novel · 352 pages · Coming of age, Family

AIAI-generated summary:Teenagers who grew up shut in their rooms, making beats on computers and writing rap bars in notebooks, form a rap group, while their parents' generation watches them with fear and incomprehension.

Greek State Prize 2025 · Shortlist

Δεν θ' αργήσω

Den th' argiso

AITitle translated by AI:“I Won't Be Long”

Vassiliki Petsa

Novel · 144 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Liverpool, 1989 to 2009: twenty years after the football disaster that shook Britain, the struggling owner of a photo shop is forced to return in his mind to the era of falling walls and face the ghosts of the past.

Greek State Prize 2024 · Shortlist

Έλα να παίξουμε!

Ela na paixoume!

AITitle translated by AI:“Come On, Let's Play!”

Dimitris Christopoulos

Novel · 160 pages · Family, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:In February 1992 Stergios Sideris arrives on Sifnos as the new rural doctor and, trying to solve the disappearance of a seven-year-old boy at Christmas 1942, comes up against his own family's secrets.

Greek State Prize 2024 · Shortlist

Τέλεση

Telesi

AITitle translated by AI:“Performance”

Fotis Dousos · 43 when first published

Novel · 260 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A young actor lands a part in a major production but cannot bring his role to life in a theatrical mask, so in a crisis he glues the mask to his face with strong adhesive, sure it will come off in a day or two.

Greek State Prize 2024 · Shortlist

Άδειος τόπος

Adeios topos

AITitle translated by AI:“Empty Place”

Giannis Nikoloudis · 36 when first published

Novel · 160 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A nameless man just released from prison staggers through the dark, dangerous passes of the 'empty place', meeting people and monsters along a path that seems already marked out for him.

Greek State Prize 2024 · Shortlist

Πλατεία Κλαυθμώνος

Plateia Klafthmonos

AITitle translated by AI:“Klafthmonos Square”

Giorgos Symbardis

Novel · 264 pages · Coming of age, Politics, Family

AIAI-generated summary:The first year of the colonels' dictatorship seen through the eyes of a nineteen-year-old law student, arrested in the garden of Klafthmonos Square in Athens, and his wanderings in the gay world of the time.

Greek State Prize 2024 · Shortlist

Δυναμώστε τη μουσική, παρακαλώ

Dynamoste ti mousiki, parakalo

AITitle translated by AI:“Turn Up the Music, Please”

Michalis Malandrakis

Novel · 264 pages · War

AIAI-generated summary:Charis Alexiadis, a young Athenian journalist, goes to Sarajevo in June 1992 as war correspondent for a new private TV channel and stays far longer than planned, through the longest siege of a modern capital.

Greek State Prize 2024 · Shortlist

Το αθώο

To athoo

AITitle translated by AI:“The Innocent”

Vasiliki Iliopoulou

Novel · 376 pages · Family, Crime

AIAI-generated summary:Eva, raised in an institution from the age of six after losing her mother and sister, returns to her native island after her husband's death to find out what really happened to her little sister.

Greek State Prize 2023 · Shortlist

Λάδι σε καμβά

Ladi se kamva

AITitle translated by AI:“Oil on Canvas”

Alexis Panselinos · 79 when first published

Novel · 224 pages · Coming of age, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:In the summer of 1966 Spyros, a student at the School of Fine Arts, spends his holidays as a guest of a painter's family on an island; soon after, April 1967 changes everything in his life.

Greek State Prize 2023 · Shortlist

Το τηλεφώνημα που δεν έγινε

To tilefonima pou den egine

AITitle translated by AI:“The Phone Call That Was Never Made”

Apostolos Doxiadis · 69 when first published

Novel · 192 pages · Autofiction

AIAI-generated summary:A student short film shows a man who finds a dime, runs to a phone booth and then cannot bring himself to dial; from that image the author starts an almost detective search from today back to 1968.

Greek State Prize 2023 · Shortlist

Ο πατέρας δεν μιλούσε γι' αυτά

O pateras den milouse gi' afta

AITitle translated by AI:“Father Didn't Talk About Those Things”

Giannis Karkanevatos

Novel · 152 pages · War, Family

AIAI-generated summary:Two brothers are divided by the Civil War: one, wounded, is smuggled out to the countries of the Eastern Bloc, the other stays behind. Years later a son tries to understand.

Greek State Prize 2023 · Shortlist

Κιθαιρώνας

Kithaironas

Nikos Mantis · 46 when first published

Novel · 464 pages · Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:The women of Thebes vanish one after another, struck by a new illness called 'maenadism', and when Ioli, a former slave married to a soldier, feels the first symptoms she begins to fear the beast within her.

Greek State Prize 2023 · Shortlist

Εμμανουήλ και Αικατερίνη

Emmanouil kai Aikaterini

AITitle translated by AI:“Emmanouil and Aikaterini”

Rhea Galanaki · 75 when first published

Novel · 416 pages · Autofiction, Family, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:A writer in her later years sets out to find who her 'known-unknown' parents were, and what shaped Emmanouil and Aikaterini before they married, following them to Cretan villages, pre-war Vienna and Bordeaux.

Greek State Prize 2023 · Shortlist

Τα πρωτοβρόχια

Ta protovrochia

AITitle translated by AI:“The First Rains”

Spyros Kiosses

Novel · 176 pages · Coming of age, Family

AIAI-generated summary:Tasos grows up in a working-class neighbourhood of a provincial Greek town in the late 1970s and early 1980s, while his grandmother's stories piece together a secret that weighs on the family.

Greek State Prize 2023 · Shortlist

Λέγε με Ισμαήλ

Lege me Ismail

AITitle translated by AI:“Call Me Ishmael”

Tessy Baila

Novel · 464 pages · Historical, Love, Migration

AIAI-generated summary:In a Greek neighbourhood of Pera, Istanbul, between 1955 and 1964, Greeks and Turks live in harmony: kind-hearted Ismail with his coffee house, lonely bookish Isidoros and others, until nationalism gathers.

Greek State Prize 2022 · Shortlist

Χάθηκε βελόνι

Chathike veloni

AITitle translated by AI:“A Needle Got Lost”

Christos Armando Gezos

Novel · 320 pages · Family, Migration

AIAI-generated summary:A man marked by fate at the edge of a hill, a mother devoted to her struggling family and a son searching for his younger brother on the other side of the world, from early 20th-century Albania to America.

Greek State Prize 2022 · Shortlist

Το τελευταίο ποστάλι

To teleftaio postali

AITitle translated by AI:“The Last Mail Boat”

Faidon Tamvakakis

Novel · 376 pages · Satire, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:On one of the last voyages of the mail ship from South Africa to St Helena, a cement magnate bankrupt in 2017 tells the stories of people tied to the fortunes of his sunken company over five days at sea.

Greek State Prize 2022 · Shortlist

Το χιόνι των Αγράφων

To chioni ton Agrafon

AITitle translated by AI:“The Snow of the Agrafa”

Panagiotis Chatzimoysiadis · 51 when first published

Novel · 160 pages · War, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:On 18 February 1948 the Rumeli Unarmed Brigade sets out to take 1,300 untrained, unarmed recruits for the Democratic Army from the Agrafa mountains to Macedonia, pursued relentlessly by government forces.

Greek State Prize 2022 · Shortlist

Ο ουρανός της παλάμης

O ouranos tis palamis

AITitle translated by AI:“The Sky of the Palm”

Stratoula Theodoratou

Novel · 216 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Eight stories cross in present-day Athens, their characters by turns protagonists and extras in each other's lives, finding compassion and solidarity in their daily fight to survive.

Greek State Prize 2021 · Shortlist

Ο Δον υπαστυνόμος

O Don ypastynomos

AITitle translated by AI:“Don Deputy Inspector”

Dimitris Karakitsos · 41 when first published

Novel · 272 pages · Satire, Crime

AIAI-generated summary:Astolfo, who swore off good literature as a boy and turned to crime novels, becomes a detective Don Quixote in Madrid and La Mancha, investigating the murder of a stilt-walker and his groom.

Greek State Prize 2021 · Shortlist

Ο τελευταίος φύλακας

O teleftaios fylakas

AITitle translated by AI:“The Last Guardian”

Dimitris Oikonomou

Novel · 498 pages · Historical, War, Family

AIAI-generated summary:In 1906 Giorgis Bakas, a boatman in Ottoman-ruled Ioannina, swears to smuggle arms for the Epirus Society; his son, a village teacher, waits for the Italians in 1940, and his grandson takes up a rifle in 1947.

Greek State Prize 2021 · Shortlist

Θηριόμορφοι

Thiriomorfoi

AITitle translated by AI:“Beast-Shaped”

Elena Maroutsou · 53 when first published

Novel · 224 pages · Love, War, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:In a Kraków hotel, a Greek literature professor grieving his wife meets an enigmatic young Italian actress, and their chance encounter unspools stories leading back to a mansion on Chios and a convent in Syracuse.

Greek State Prize 2021 · Shortlist

Το στέμμα των αυγών

To stemma ton avgon

AITitle translated by AI:“The Crown of Dawns”

Kostas Hatziantoniou · 55 when first published

Novel · 384 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:In 1922, retreating from Asia Minor, a Greek captain rescues six notebooks transcribing a lost 13th-century Byzantine manuscript by the monk Efpsychios, which ninety years later reach a writer.

Greek State Prize 2021 · Shortlist

Παραγουάη

Paragouai

AITitle translated by AI:“Paraguay”

Michalis Modinos · 70 when first published

Novel · 384 pages · Historical, Migration

AIAI-generated summary:Gavriil, an agronomist from Karditsa whose business and marriage have collapsed, seeks a new start through an idealised love and a farm in Paraguay, where an ancestor from the Pindus fled three centuries earlier.

Greek State Prize 2020 · Shortlist

Ρηχό νερό, σκιές

Richo nero, skies

AITitle translated by AI:“Shallow Water, Shadows”

Akis Papantonis

Novel · 168 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:In the early hours of 26 April 1986 the residents of Pripyat sleep, argue, make love or wrestle with their demons as reactor No. 4 of the Chernobyl power station explodes, and their everyday lives reach a turning point.

Greek State Prize 2020 · Shortlist

Τίνα: Η ιστορία μιας ευθυγράμμισης

Tina: I istoria mias efthygrammisis

AITitle translated by AI:“Tina: The Story of an Alignment”

Angela Dimitrakaki

Novel · 184 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Tina, a university lecturer in Athens writing a book on Balkan cinema, cancels her classes for 'a funeral', lies to her parents and avoids the children who have come from Thessaloniki to save her.

Greek State Prize 2020 · Shortlist

Η θεραπεία των αναμνήσεων

I therapeia ton anamniseon

AITitle translated by AI:“The Treatment of Memories”

Christos Asteriou · 48 when first published

Novel · 299 pages · Family, Migration

AIAI-generated summary:Michalis Bouzianis, a famous writer facing a midlife panic, a painful divorce and writer's block, is shaken by his father's sudden death and a family secret that sends him from New York to Athens and back.

Greek State Prize 2020 · Shortlist

Εκεί που ζούμε

Ekei pou zoume

AITitle translated by AI:“Where We Live”

Christos Kythreotis

Novel · 440 pages · Love, Family

AIAI-generated summary:On one summer day in 2014, shortly before leaving Greece, the lawyer Antonis Spetsiotis must handle a difficult case, meet his first love and ride with his father, a driver, on his last run before retirement.

Greek State Prize 2020 · Shortlist

Κάποιοι άλλοι

Kapoioi alloi

AITitle translated by AI:“Some Other People”

Iakovos Anyfantakis

Novel · 340 pages · Migration, Crime

AIAI-generated summary:A young Greek couple who emigrated to a corner of Europe in the crisis, sending out résumés every day and sharing a bed without being together, see one night a man fall dead from the sky onto their roof.

Greek State Prize 2020 · Shortlist

Οι ρετσίνες του βασιλιά

Oi retsines tou vasilia

AITitle translated by AI:“The King's Retsinas”

Isidoros Zourgos · 55 when first published

Novel · 456 pages · Family, Migration

AIAI-generated summary:One autumn afternoon an old man turns up in a Greek village, recognised by some as the one who inspected the works at the tower at the top of the hill; a year of family stories unfolds in a country hit by unemployment.

Greek State Prize 2020 · Shortlist

Ο φίλος του Πέδρο

O filos tou Pedro

AITitle translated by AI:“Pedro's Friend”

Kostas Kalimeris

Novel · 256 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A fictional hero tries to find his true self, stepping out of his clothes to drag memories outside themselves, in a playful mix of novel, poetry, novella, testimony and essay.

Greek State Prize 2020 · Shortlist

Αγόρι

Agori

AITitle translated by AI:“Boy”

Manos Ragiadis

Novel · 264 pages · Family, Crime

AIAI-generated summary:Six days in the life of a dysfunctional family in the middle of a scorching summer, while the capital is shaken by a series of seemingly unconnected murders and a boy, Donald, tries to survive.

Greek State Prize 2020 · Shortlist

Το λούνα παρκ στο ιερό βουνό

To louna park sto iero vouno

AITitle translated by AI:“The Luna Park on the Holy Mountain”

Soti Triantafyllou

Novel · 350 pages · Historical, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:In 1980s Tbilisi, Irina Nozadze, a soap-factory worker's daughter copying farm reports at a Soviet Georgian newspaper, sets out to investigate a failed hijacking by four young Georgians trying to defect to the West.

Greek State Prize 2019 · Shortlist

Ελαφρά ελληνικά τραγούδια

Elafra ellinika tragoudia

AITitle translated by AI:“Light Greek Songs”

Alexis Panselinos · 75 when first published

Novel · 328 pages · Historical, Love, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:In the Athens of 1950, doomed love affairs and political conspiracies, light popular songs, executions and beauty pageants come back to life as the city recovers from a war that left it bleeding.

Greek State Prize 2019 · Shortlist

Δύο

Dyo

AITitle translated by AI:“Two”

Elena Maroutsou · 51 when first published

Novel · 200 pages · Family, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:After her mother's sudden death, the narrator finds a series of letters with sketches inspired by Diane Arbus's photographs, and follows them into her family's past in the mines of Serifos, where revolts were crushed in blood.

Greek State Prize 2019 · Shortlist

Ο άνδρας που γεννήθηκε με τον Ελευθέριο Βενιζέλο

O andras pou gennithike me ton Eleftherio Venizelo

AITitle translated by AI:“The Man Who Was Born with Eleftherios Venizelos”

Giannis Papagiannis

Novel · 496 pages · Satire, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:In 2013 Anna Maria Athanasiou sets out to make a film about her great-grandfather Iakovos, born the same day as Eleftherios Venizelos, using an artificial-intelligence program that soon slips out of control.

Greek State Prize 2019 · Shortlist

Αδέλφια

Adelfia

AITitle translated by AI:“Brothers”

Giorgos Symbardis

Novel · 312 pages · Family, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:In a family of the 1950s and early 1960s, a civil war breaks out between two brothers, a Cain and an Abel from utterly different worlds, told by the younger one, who cannot manage to grow up.

Greek State Prize 2019 · Shortlist

Στο στήθος μέσα χάλκινη καρδιά

Sto stithos mesa chalkini kardia

AITitle translated by AI:“A Bronze Heart in the Chest”

Kostas Katsoularis · 50 when first published

Novel · 272 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:In Athens in September 2013, fifteen-year-old Nasos, the most gifted pupil of his school, fails to turn up on the first day of high school, and only his classics teacher Argyris refuses to accept the disappearance.

Greek State Prize 2019 · Shortlist

Κόκκινος Σταυρός

Kokkinos Stavros

AITitle translated by AI:“Red Cross”

Maria Gavala · 71 when first published

Novel · 480 pages · Historical, War

AIAI-generated summary:Ariadne Hope, a Greek-German art history student in Dresden, researches the art of chronically institutionalised mental patients murdered by the Nazis, among them the painter Bertha Gertrud Fleck (1870–1940).

Greek State Prize 2019 · Shortlist

Το δέντρο της υπακοής

To dentro tis ypakois

AITitle translated by AI:“The Tree of Obedience”

Vassiliki Petsa

Novel · 328 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Linked stories move from Ireland and Portugal to Ararat, Siberia and the Aral Sea, following people who seek salvation and fight decay, violence and the inevitable with obedience as their compass and weapon.

Greek State Prize 2018 · Shortlist

Ο κήπος στις φλόγες

O kipos stis floges

AITitle translated by AI:“The Garden in Flames”

Dimitris Nollas · 77 when first published

Novel · 160 pages · Politics · Δύσκολοι καιροί, book 3

AIAI-generated summary:A group of young people live through Greece's recent crisis, one of them torn over whether stolen money could ever be used to prevent a planned robbery, in the final volume of the trilogy Difficult Times.

Greek State Prize 2018 · Shortlist

Καρμπόν

Karmpon

AITitle translated by AI:“Carbon Copy”

Giorgos Kouvas

Novel · 248 pages · Satire

AIAI-generated summary:Aris Kontos, a timid introvert, is suddenly gifted with hyper-acute hearing and becomes addicted to eavesdropping on, and copying, the daily life of the painter in the penthouse above him.

Greek State Prize 2018 · Shortlist

Τυχερό

Tychero

Kostas Kavanozis

Novel · 326 pages · Historical, Migration, War

AIAI-generated summary:Built entirely from real testimony and documents, the novel turns on Olympic Airways' first fatal crash in October 1959, reaching back to a refugee from Eastern Thrace who settled in the Evros village of Tychero.

Greek State Prize 2018 · Shortlist

Οι τυφλοί

Oi tyfloi

AITitle translated by AI:“The Blind”

Nikos Mantis · 41 when first published

Novel · 608 pages · Politics, Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:In summer 2011 Isidoros searches the troubled streets of Athens for Sofia; in 1972 a young telepathic evzone is to star in the junta's celebrations; in 1985 Nate investigates his father's sudden death in the Cyclades.

Greek State Prize 2018 · Shortlist

Αργός σίδηρος

Argos sidiros

AITitle translated by AI:“Slow Iron”

Sofronis Sofroniou

Novel · 340 pages · Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:A chess player killed in a New York square is carried to the Small Life, an afterlife of limited duration, where he must reconstruct the novel 4001 by the Austrian Robert Kraus and find out whether its author is there.

Greek State Prize 2018 · Shortlist

Ο αγριόγατος πηγαίνει πάντα μόνος

O agriogatos pigainei panta monos

AITitle translated by AI:“The Wildcat Always Walks Alone”

Teti Pangalou

Novel · 272 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:In the village of Triskala in the early 19th century, as the first sparks of the Greek Revolution glow, the orphan Asterios grows up haunted by the wildcat his foster mother, a midwife, invented to frighten him.

Greek State Prize 2017 · Shortlist

Ο θάνατος του μισθοφόρου

O thanatos tou misthoforou

AITitle translated by AI:“The Death of the Mercenary”

Antonis Nikolis · 56 when first published

Novel · 296 pages · Love, Crime

AIAI-generated summary:Ilias, a forty-five-year-old bisexual philology teacher and confirmed bachelor on Kos, meets Yuri, a young professional soldier of Russian descent, at his gym, and the encounter awakens his senses.

Greek State Prize 2017 · Shortlist

Πολ και Λόρα, ζωγραφική εκ του φυσικού

Pol kai Lora, zografiki ek tou fysikou

AITitle translated by AI:“Paul and Laura, Painted from Life”

Aris Marangopoulos · 68 when first published

Novel · 528 pages · Historical, Love, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:Paul Lafargue, a revolutionary student expelled from every French university, and Laura Marx, Karl Marx's daughter, meet in London shortly before the Paris Commune and share forty-five years of ideas and life.

Greek State Prize 2017 · Shortlist

Υπουργός Νύχτας

Ypourgos Nychtas

AITitle translated by AI:“Minister of the Night”

Giorgos Skampardonis · 63 when first published

Novel · 395 pages · Satire, Crime, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:A lone gambler and adventurer climbs a society of broken institutions, from respectable undertaker to gang boss of the night trade, dubbed 'minister of the night', and on into the top ranks of government.

Greek State Prize 2017 · Shortlist

Ο Έλληνας γιατρός

O Ellinas giatros

AITitle translated by AI:“The Greek Doctor”

Karolina Mermiga

Novel · 580 pages · Historical, War

AIAI-generated summary:The life of the doctor Konstantinos M. (1874–1941) unfolds the rise of the Athenian bourgeoisie, the wars and political feuds that split Greece in two, and the country's deep wounds and moments of glory.

Greek State Prize 2017 · Shortlist

Το πέρασμα

To perasma

AITitle translated by AI:“The Passage”

Konstantinos Tzamiotis

Novel · 264 pages · Migration

AIAI-generated summary:One winter night a ship carrying over three hundred refugees is wrecked off a small south Aegean island of 120 inhabitants, and bad weather and bureaucracy force the two communities to live together for four days.

Greek State Prize 2017 · Shortlist

Οι επόπτες

Oi epoptes

AITitle translated by AI:“The Supervisors”

Michalis Michailidis

Novel · 355 pages · Satire

AIAI-generated summary:In 1995 work begins on the Øresund link between Denmark and Sweden, and its two government supervisors, a well-meaning Dane and a cynical Swede, are drawn into five years of paradoxical situations.

Greek State Prize 2016 · Shortlist

Η Αϊσέ πάει διακοπές

I Aise paei diakopes

AITitle translated by AI:“Aishe Goes on Holiday”

Constantia Soteriou

Novel · 102 pages · War, Love, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:Eleni, born in a Paphos village in the 1940s, moves to Nicosia, insists on marrying the Turkish Cypriot Arif and becomes Hatice, in a novel named after the codeword for the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus.

Greek State Prize 2016 · Shortlist

Dendrites

Δενδρίτες · Dendrites

Kallia Papadaki

Novel · 208 pages · Family, Migration, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:In a decaying Camden, New Jersey, in 1980, a teenage boy vanishes and his mother dies the next morning, and his orphaned twelve-year-old sister Minnie bursts into the life of her classmate Leto and her family.

Greek State Prize 2016 · Shortlist

Η άκρα ταπείνωση

I akra tapeinosi

AITitle translated by AI:“The Utmost Humiliation”

Rhea Galanaki · 68 when first published

Novel · 336 pages · Politics

AIAI-generated summary:On 12 February 2012, the night Athens burned, a former philology teacher and a former painter who share a room in a run-down hostel in the city centre slip out to join the demonstrations.

Greek State Prize 2016 · Shortlist

Βερονάλ

Veronal

Takis Theodoropoulos · 61 when first published

Novel · 176 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:In 1937 the classical scholar Ioannis Sykoutris, only thirty-six, dies with a used vial of the barbiturate Veronal among his things, though the coroner rules a heart attack and the press repeats it.

Greek State Prize 2015 · Shortlist

Ανέστιος

Anestios

AITitle translated by AI:“Homeless”

Alexandra Deligiorgi · 67 when first published

Novel · 144 pages

AIAI-generated summary:The diaries of an electrical engineer who, for almost six years, wanders the streets of Athens homeless, confessing his thoughts, the cold nights and his refusal to give up thinking.

Greek State Prize 2015 · Shortlist

Ο κηπουρός κι ο καιροσκόπος

O kipouros ki o kairoskopos

AITitle translated by AI:“The Gardener and the Weather-Watcher”

Dimitris Fyssas · 58 when first published

Novel · 260 pages · Historical, War

AIAI-generated summary:In occupied Athens, a young meteorologist studying the city's climate and an agronomist surveying its vegetable gardens become friends, refusing to take sides in the political strife around them.

Greek State Prize 2015 · Shortlist

Ο άσος στο μανίκι

O asos sto maniki

AITitle translated by AI:“The Ace up the Sleeve”

Giannis Pliagkos

Novel · 344 pages · Crime, Love

AIAI-generated summary:Pavlos works as a croupier in an illegal gambling club on Syngrou Avenue in Athens, watching the players' ruined lives and falling for Natalia, a Romanian migrant who works there too.

Greek State Prize 2015 · Shortlist

Τελευταία έξοδος: Στυμφαλία

Teleftaia exodos: Stymfalia

AITitle translated by AI:“Last Exit: Stymphalia”

Michalis Modinos · 64 when first published

Novel · 192 pages · Satire, Nature, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:At dawn on the Stymphalia plateau, the narrator passes a checkpoint held by bearded men with hunting rifles who welcome him from 'the land of the dead', in a darkly comic chronicle of Greece's crisis.

Greek State Prize 2014 · Shortlist

Δυο φορές αθώα

Dyo fores athoa

AITitle translated by AI:“Twice Innocent”

Elena Houzouri

Novel · 230 pages · Migration, Historical, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:In 2011 Veronika K., born in Tashkent to Greek Civil War refugees and repatriated in 1989, is interviewed by a young journalist about the children of returning refugees, and must face secrets of both her lives.

Greek State Prize 2014 · Shortlist

Συγγενής

Syngenis

AITitle translated by AI:“Relative”

Karolina Mermiga

Novel · 214 pages · Family, Love

AIAI-generated summary:An unknown daughter appears from the past and splits a marriage in two, while a mother tries to bring to life the frozen embryo of her dead child, in a novel about kinship by blood, by contract and by choice.

Greek State Prize 2014 · Shortlist

Η πόλη και η σιωπή

I poli kai i siopi

AITitle translated by AI:“The City and the Silence”

Konstantinos Tzamiotis

Novel · 494 pages · Satire

AIAI-generated summary:In a decaying Athens, a former button manufacturer now driving a taxi finds a forgotten bag full of money in his cab, and his attempt to do the right thing sets him against family, friends, police and the media.

Greek State Prize 2014 · Shortlist

God Is My Witness

Μάρτυς μου ο Θεός · Martys mou o Theos

Makis Tsitas · 42 when first published

Novel · 256 pages · Satire

AIAI-generated summary:Fifty, out of work and in poor health, a simple man who only wants to live with dignity pours out in a torrent of words the betrayals he has suffered since childhood from women, employers and his own family.

Greek State Prize 2014 · Shortlist

Όξινη βροχή

Oxini vrochi

AITitle translated by AI:“Acid Rain”

Maria Powell

Novel · 323 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:In an aged, lawless Athens of the early 21st century, battered by endless storms, a man trying to win back his lost life and a woman building hers from nothing meet under extreme circumstances.

Greek State Prize 2014 · Shortlist

Ο ζωγράφος του Μπελογιάννη

O zografos tou Mpelogianni

AITitle translated by AI:“Beloyannis's Painter”

Nikos Davvetas

Novel · 217 pages · Crime, Politics, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:A Greek writer who owns Picasso's sketches for the famous portrait of Nikos Beloyannis is found murdered in Paris, and a French detective must reach back into history to solve the case.

Greek State Prize 2014 · Shortlist

Άγρια Ακρόπολη

Agria Akropoli

AITitle translated by AI:“Wild Acropolis”

Nikos Mantis · 37 when first published

Novel · 222 pages · Speculative, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:In 2159 the world is ruled by intelligence: resurrected Neanderthals form the lowest caste, and Mano, a young Neanderthal in New Athens, is offered one chance to change his life by a man plotting to overthrow the system.

Greek State Prize 2013 · Shortlist

Ίσλα Μπόα

Isla Mpoa

Christos Asteriou · 41 when first published

Novel · 348 pages · Satire

AIAI-generated summary:Ten people, each with a guilty past, are cut off from civilization on the island of Isla Boa and must negotiate their needs and beliefs, while a young journalist in Florida sets out to interview the forgotten Sammy Coe.

Greek State Prize 2013 · Shortlist

The Scapegoat

Χορεύουν οι ελέφαντες · Chorevoun oi elefantes

Sophia Nikolaidou

Novel · 345 pages · Historical, Politics, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:A Thessaloniki schoolboy refuses to sit the national university exams, and his favourite teacher sets him to investigate the 1948 murder of an American journalist for which an innocent man was jailed.

Greek State Prize 2013 · Shortlist

Το μυστικό της Έλλης

To mystiko tis Ellis

AITitle translated by AI:“Elli's Secret”

Theodoros Grigoriadis · 56 when first published

Novel · 272 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Near fifty and convinced her love life is over, Elli lives among books and photo albums in the Rouf district of Athens until a married younger man she meets at the street market reawakens her desire.

Greek State Prize 2013 · Shortlist

Φεβρουάριος

Fevrouarios

AITitle translated by AI:“February”

Thodoris Georgakopoulos · 36 when first published

Novel · 350 pages · Autofiction

AIAI-generated summary:A young Athenian who lost his wife in a car crash in February 2011 decides a year later to write about her, and about losing his job, his future and his grip on life as the whole country falls apart.

Greek State Prize 2013 · Shortlist

Παιχνίδια κρίκετ

Paichnidia kriket

AITitle translated by AI:“Cricket Games”

Vassilis Ladas

Novella · 131 pages · Migration

AIAI-generated summary:Outside Patras in late 2010, a crew of unemployed Greeks and a crew of unemployed migrants pick olives side by side, competing and quarrelling, while the migrants play cricket every Sunday on an abandoned pitch.

Greek State Prize 2012 · Shortlist

Σκοτεινές επιγραφές

Skoteines epigrafes

AITitle translated by AI:“Dark Inscriptions”

Alexis Panselinos · 68 when first published

Novel · 543 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:An amateur painter notices a mysterious slogan sprayed high on a city-centre wall and pins on it his hope of winning back the woman he has lost.

Greek State Prize 2012 · Shortlist

Το δάσος των παιδιών

To dasos ton paidion

AITitle translated by AI:“The Children's Forest”

Christos Angelakos

Novel · 245 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Loukia's story is bound up with that of the woods below her home, a tale of people alive, dead or lost without trace, and of those who were deceived by love.

Greek State Prize 2012 · Shortlist

Στην άκρη του κόσμου

Stin akri tou kosmou

AITitle translated by AI:“At the Edge of the World”

Giorgos Xenarios · 52 when first published

Novel · 384 pages · Historical, Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:In the early twentieth century an unknown epidemic breaks out in a town in the southern Peloponnese, and its people, like the troupe of a many-coloured circus, flee in search of safety.

Greek State Prize 2012 · Shortlist

Ανεμώλια

Anemolia

AITitle translated by AI:“Words of the Wind”

Isidoros Zourgos · 47 when first published

Novel · 458 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A group of men who have been friends since childhood run away on a sailing boat at the start of summer, leaving their old lives behind for good.

Greek State Prize 2012 · Shortlist

Στην άκρη της νύχτας

Stin akri tis nychtas

AITitle translated by AI:“At the Edge of the Night”

Kostas Mourselas · 79 when first published

Novel · 302 pages · Love, Crime

AIAI-generated summary:Anonymous calls in the small hours, a stranger in his bed whose fling may turn into an obsession, an odd wager and a friend who may have slept with his wife: a love story that turns into a thriller, or the other way round.

Greek State Prize 2012 · Shortlist

Η σχεδία

I schedia

AITitle translated by AI:“The Raft”

Michalis Modinos · 61 when first published

Novel · 191 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:Paris, 1818: a woman who survived the wreck of the frigate Méduse calls on the young Théodore Géricault in his Montmartre studio and tells him her story.

Greek State Prize 2011 · Shortlist

Πώς να κρυφτείς

Pos na kryfteis

AITitle translated by AI:“How to Hide”

Amanda Michalopoulou · 44 when first published

Novel · 368 pages · Migration, Family

AIAI-generated summary:A Greek teacher in his mid-thirties takes a post in Berlin hoping to understand his early years, when a German couple kidnapped him and raised him away from the family he was born into.

Greek State Prize 2011 · Shortlist

Back to Delphi

Τα σακιά · Ta sakia

Ioanna Karystiani · 58 when first published

Novel · 320 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Vivi Choleva, who earns her living caring for elderly people in their homes, takes her son Linos, who has strayed onto dark paths, on a five-day trip to Delphi.

Greek State Prize 2011 · Shortlist

Ποιος θυμάται τον Αλφόνς

Poios thymatai ton Alfons

AITitle translated by AI:“Who Remembers Alfons”

Kostas Akrivos · 52 when first published

Novel · 309 pages · Family, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:A restless young man from the Alps wanders south and in 1926 makes his home on Mount Pelion, where he becomes famous across Europe; three decades after his death a writer sets out to find out who he was.

Greek State Prize 2011 · Shortlist

Το δίκιο είναι ζόρικο πολύ

To dikio einai zoriko poly

AITitle translated by AI:“Justice Is a Hard Thing”

Maro Douka · 63 when first published

Novel · 567 pages · Historical, War, Family · Στις γραμμές του μύθου και της Ιστορίας, book 2

AIAI-generated summary:A young woman leaves university in Athens for a while and goes home to Chania, where a paper she stumbles on leads her into her grandfather's past and the town's history at the end of the war.

Greek State Prize 2011 · Shortlist

Ο παλαιστής και ο δερβίσης

O palaistis kai o dervisis

AITitle translated by AI:“The Wrestler and the Dervish”

Theodoros Grigoriadis · 54 when first published

Novel · 317 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:At a village festival in Macedonia, Mirela, a young Athenian photographer on assignment, meets Cemal, a Turkish wrestler who takes on Greek and Balkan opponents at religious fairs.

Greek State Prize 2011 · Shortlist

Ήλιος με δόντια

Ilios me dontia

AITitle translated by AI:“Sun with Teeth”

Yannis Makridakis

Novel · 246 pages · War

AIAI-generated summary:In a rush of memories, a man tells the story of his life, a life damaged as a side effect of a historic wartime disaster that was never investigated.

Greek State Prize 2010 · Shortlist

Η οδύσσεια των διδύμων

I odysseia ton didymon

AITitle translated by AI:“The Odyssey of the Twins”

Alexis Parnis · 85 when first published

Novel · 935 pages · Historical, Politics, Migration

AIAI-generated summary:At the end of 1949 Kastrinos, a former partisan who fought with the Democratic Army, is a political refugee in Tashkent, trying to settle into a new life with his family.

Greek State Prize 2010 · Shortlist

Εύα

Eva

Ersi Sotiropoulos · 56 when first published

Novel · 215 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Walking home through empty streets after a riotous Christmas Eve, Eva strays into an Athens she has never seen, a secret town inside the town that starts to pull her under.

Greek State Prize 2010 · Shortlist

Μέδουσα από σμάλτο

Medousa apo smalto

AITitle translated by AI:“An Enamel Medusa”

Panagiotis Agapitos · 50 when first published

Novel · 457 pages · Historical, Crime

AIAI-generated summary:In November 835 an imperial envoy returning empty-handed from talks with the Arab rulers of Crete is forced by a storm to put in at remote Skyros, where a builder's death draws him into the island's hidden passions.

Greek State Prize 2010 · Shortlist

Φωτιές του Ιούδα, στάχτες του Οιδίποδα

Foties tou Iouda, stachtes tou Oidipoda

AITitle translated by AI:“Fires of Judas, Ashes of Oedipus”

Rhea Galanaki · 62 when first published

Novel · 270 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:In 2000 a young Greek-Jewish schoolteacher arrives in a mountain village on Crete, where the Easter custom of burning Judas opens a way into a closed society and into her own troubled family history.

Greek State Prize 2010 · Shortlist

Στην απέναντι όχθη

Stin apenanti ochthi

AITitle translated by AI:“On the Opposite Bank”

Tilemachos Kotsias

Novel · 426 pages · Historical, Family

AIAI-generated summary:In 1924 Petros Charisis comes home from America to the Mourgana mountains on the Greek–Albanian border and builds a hut by the river Xerias, around which a new village grows.

Greek State Prize 2009 · Shortlist

Το χρονικό του Δαρείου

To chroniko tou Dareiou

AITitle translated by AI:“The Chronicle of Darius”

Giorgis Giatromanolakis · 68 when first published

Novel · 229 pages · Satire, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:A zealous supporter recounts how a party and its leader, the womanising "Darius", rose to power promising the Great Change, here and now, and how it all came apart.

Greek State Prize 2009 · Shortlist

Όλα βαίνουν καλώς εναντίον μας

Ola vainoun kalos enantion mas

AITitle translated by AI:“All Is Going Well Against Us”

Giorgos Skampardonis · 55 when first published

Novel · 434 pages · Historical, Love

AIAI-generated summary:From 1932 to 1940, Markos, a former butcher who is becoming the father of rebetiko, is consumed by a sick, burning love for Zigoala, the wife he married first, who has moved in with a boyhood friend of his.

Greek State Prize 2009 · Shortlist

Ερημιά στο βλέμμα τους

Erimia sto vlemma tous

AITitle translated by AI:“Desolation in Their Eyes”

Kostas Logaras · 58 when first published

Novel · 285 pages · Migration, Family

AIAI-generated summary:Shortly before the 2004 Athens Olympics, Giannoula Sorou, who left her Peloponnese mountain village for Chicago in 1964, comes home for a short visit and meets Ben and Zamira, Albanian migrants now living there.

Greek State Prize 2009 · Shortlist

Η ασπίδα των Θερμοπυλών

I aspida ton Thermopylon

AITitle translated by AI:“The Shield of Thermopylae”

Nikos K. Kyriazis

Novel · 347 pages · Historical, War, Love

AIAI-generated summary:An oracle given to the seer Megistias foretells a god-given shield that will bind the fates of a Spartan, an Athenian and the Persian general Mardonius with those of two women, through the wars against Persia.

Greek State Prize 2007 · Shortlist

Το μονοπάτι στη θάλασσα

To monopati sti thalassa

AITitle translated by AI:“The Path in the Sea”

Antonis Sourounis

Novel · 653 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:A narrator recalls a poor childhood in Thessaloniki, when everything was small and scarce, his world reached from the woods of Sheikh Sou to the sea at the White Tower, and food was greeted like an icon.

Greek State Prize 2007 · Shortlist

Τα χερουβείμ της μοκέτας

Ta cherouveim tis moketas

AITitle translated by AI:“The Cherubs on the Carpet”

Eleni Giannakaki

Novel · 287 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:A wife and mother talks about her household, the novel everyone says she should write and the plump cherubs she pictures on her spotless carpet, in a monologue that slides from calm confession into psychological thriller.

Greek State Prize 2007 · Shortlist

Μισή ζωή

Misi zoi

AITitle translated by AI:“Half a Life”

Takis Chatzianagnostou · 83 when first published

Novel · 191 pages

Greek State Prize 2007 · Shortlist

Οικογενειακές ιστορίες

Oikogeneiakes istories

AITitle translated by AI:“Family Stories”

Tasos Goudelis · 57 when first published

Novel · 112 pages

Greek State Prize 2007 · Shortlist

Τυφλό σύστημα

Tyflo systima

AITitle translated by AI:“Blind System”

Vassilis Pesmazoglou

Novel · 301 pages · Family, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:In late-twentieth-century Florence, a former philosopher driven out of Greek academia lives as a professional gambler in a palazzo, among Renaissance paintings and two kittens he has rescued.

Greek State Prize 2004 · Shortlist

Από τη μία εικόνα στην άλλη

Apo ti mia eikona stin alli

AITitle translated by AI:“From One Image to Another”

Dimitris Nollas · 63 when first published

Novel · 175 pages · Politics

AIAI-generated summary:Victor, Aris, Christina and Sotiris belong to a generation that set out to change its own life and the country's, only to fashion a new image of the very idol it believed it had rejected.

Greek State Prize 2004 · Shortlist

Αγιογραφία

Agiografia

AITitle translated by AI:“Hagiography”

Nikos Panayotopoulos · 40 when first published

Novel · 330 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A boy is found asleep on a heap of bones fragrant with incense and taken in by a village woman in Arcadia; as he grows, a string of chance events persuades the villagers that he is a living saint.

Greek State Prize 2004 · Shortlist

Che Committed Suicide

Ο Τσε αυτοκτόνησε · O Tse aftoktonise

Petros Markaris

Novel · 356 pages · Crime, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:When a prominent businessman takes his own life live on television, no one sees a crime, except a police inspector who is off work recovering and looking for anything to break the boredom.

Greek State Prize 2004 · Shortlist

Σα σπασμένα φτερά

Sa spasmena ftera

AITitle translated by AI:“Like Broken Wings”

Tasos Chatzitatsis · 58 when first published

Novel · 208 pages · Family, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:Amalia Thoma, the last of her line, returns to her family's empty house and answers to the voices of all its women, in a chronicle that runs from the interwar years to the present.