Critic Reviews
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Karen Van Dyck is the Kimon A. Doukas Professor of Modern Greek Literature at Columbia University. She writes on modern Greek and diaspora literature and on gender and translation. She has edited or co-edited several volumes of poetry, including A Century of Greek Poetry (2004); The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present (2010); and, for NYRB Poets, Austerity Measures: The New Greek Poetry (2017). Her translations have appeared in Brooklyn Rail, Asymptote, and The Baffler.
A literary review. We cover non-fiction, literary fiction and poetry. Est. 2011
"'Three Summers' ... allowed Liberaki the space to imagine women who might reject their own families, while remaining nuanced, sensitive & sympathetic figures in their own right." @LamornaAsh on Margarita Liberaki https://t.co/jfvTRajZO0
Always with a book & watching squirrels. 🐿 #translatedfiction 🌍#nonfiction 🍄 #childrensbooks 🥳 Instagram: @elifthereader
Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki is one of the contemporary Greek classics and tells the story of three sisters over three consecutive summers. It is an excellent read if you miss summer. 🏖️ https://t.co/DSUstF8mvm #greekliterature #bookreview https://t.co/RHeUtI7xZS
Words: @nytimes, @parisreview, @VICE, @JoylandMagazine, @gburgreview. Loves: books&jokes, mozz sticks, my dachshund Roger. Rep: Chris Parris-Lamb @TheGernertCo.
@lynnsstrong "Three Summers" by Margarita Liberaki & "Family Lexicon" by Natalia Ginzburg
"Sweet, light, and a dreamy escape . . . The book is so transporting to early adolescence, but with fresher strawberries than you ever got to eat!" --Lit Hub
"Over and above . . . innovation in the form of the Greek novel, Liberaki also made what we might consider a feminist political contribution to Greek letters. Following Woolf, she captures life as it is lived in small 'moments of being, ' especially of female domestic rituals . . . translating these private moments into the public language that had effectively been forbidden to Greek women." --Niko Maragos, Electric Literature
"Makes for an appealing and quite rich novel of young women's lives--with interesting secondary characters and stories, too--with some creative twists and touches by Liberaki in how she presents and unfolds her tale. . . . the writing is strong and often arresting. A nice piece of work." --The Complete Review
"In this unforgettable novel, lush and evocative passages are interspersed with candid, astringent, and often unsettling insights about adolescence, desire, and the mysterious web of human relationships. Margarita Liberaki's sensuousness has an edge, and her tartness has a compelling sweetness. Enthralled, the reader moves deeper and deeper into her summery world." --Rachel Hadas
"This cinematic, sun-drenched novel about innocence and experience depicts a vanished era of bourgeois pleasures against the gardens and olive groves of one of Athens's oldest suburbs. The mores of Athenian society are in tension with the drives and abundance of the Greek landscape itself: even the orderly pistachio orchards, with their male and female trees yearning for communion, vibrate with sex, heat, color, flavor, and scent. Karen Van Dyck's translation vividly reenacts Liberaki's color-saturated prose." --A.E. Stallings