3rd Chania Book Festival – Announcement
12/03/2024
Pre-Festival Event with Peter Constantine
19/05/20253rd Chania Book Festival – Announcement
12/03/2024Pre-Festival Event with Peter Constantine
19/05/20254th Chania Book Festival
25-29 June 2025
We read. We discuss. We connect.
6 Weeks Until the 4th Chania Book Festival!
Pre-Festival Event with British Translator and Author Peter Constantine
Saturday, 17 May 2025, 20:00, Centre of Mediterranean Architecture (Grand Arsenal), Chania
The Chania Book Festival (CBF), organised by the Municipality of Chania in collaboration with the Region of Crete, returns for its fourth consecutive year from Wednesday 25 to Sunday 29 June 2025, with the central theme “Our Home, the Planet.”
With the participation of prominent Greek and international authors, publishers, translators, academics, and intellectuals, the 4th CBF will feature panel discussions on timely issues from both the literary and social spheres, as well as book presentations. The Festival returns more vibrant than ever, set against the backdrop of Chania’s Venetian Harbour, between the Centre of Mediterranean Architecture and the "Mikis Theodorakis" Theatre.
This year’s programme will begin with a special pre-festival event on Saturday, 17 May 2025, at 20:00, at the Centre of Mediterranean Architecture (Megalo Arsenali) in Chania, featuring as guest of honour the distinguished translator, author, and professor in the Department of Translation Studies at the University of Connecticut, Peter Constantine.
Peter Constantine, born in London to an Austrian mother and an English father of Greek-Turkish descent, has received numerous prestigious international awards for his work as a translator. He has translated from nine languages — Modern and Ancient Greek, German, Russian, French, Italian, Albanian, Dutch, and Slovene — and his body of work includes major authors such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Niccolò Machiavelli, Bernhard Schlink, Thomas Bernhard, Günter Grass, Ismail Kadare, Leo Tolstoy, Isaac Babel, and Nikolai Gogol, as well as texts from Ancient Greek literature, including works by Sophocles. Notably, he has also translated Mother, the poetic work of the late Archbishop Stylianos Harkianakis of Australia, who was originally from Rethymno.
He co-edited, alongside other prominent scholars of Modern Greek literature, the landmark anthologies A Century of Greek Poetry: 1900–2000 (Cosmos Publishing, 2004) and The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present (edited additionally by Rachel Hadas, Edmund Keeley, and Karen Van Dyck, W.W. Norton & Company, 2010), making a significant contribution to the international promotion of Greek-language literature across the centuries. Among other honors, he has received the PEN Translation Prize for Six Early Stories by Thomas Mann and the National Translation Award (USA) for The Undiscovered Chekhov.
The choice of Peter Constantine as the featured guest for the first event of the Chania Book Festival highlights the Festival’s strong emphasis on literary translation to and from Greek — both as a gateway for Greek audiences to engage with international literary currents, and as a means of introducing Greek-language literature to readers around the world. The art and craft of translation will thus take center stage in this year’s program, with dedicated events exploring its creative and cultural significance.
During the event, the author will engage in a conversation with journalist and Chania Book Festival project team member Kyriaki Beioglou, on the occasion of the publication of his first novel, The Purchased Bride (Patakis Publishers, 2024). The novel is based on the true story of the author’s Greek grandmother and her odyssey, beginning in a Greek village in the Caucasus. The discussion will be followed by an open Q&A with the audience.
The event will be introduced by Nikos Kalogeris, Deputy Regional Governor of Chania, Panagiotis Simandirakis, Mayor of Chania, and Manolis Pimplis, Director of the Chania Book Festival.
Save the date: May 17 for the pre-festival opening event — and in six weeks, join us for the summer’s biggest event dedicated to books, translation, and world literature!
Stay updated through our renewed, trilingual (Greek, English, French) website www.chaniabookfestival.gr
and through the Festival’s social media pages:
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