Great reading that provides a sense of the city, from the Traveler online Ultimate Travel Library.
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The Colossus of Maroussi, by Henry Miller (1941)
“A passionate explosion of love for Athens and Greece in the late 1930s.”––Sofka Zinovieff, author, Eurydice Street: A Place in Athens. Henry Miller’s ouzo swilling idyll, along with Lawrence Durrell cut short by the outbreak of World War II.
Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens, by James Davidson (1997) Drawing on a remarkable range of sources, James Davidson paints a scintillating portrait of the private lives of ancient Athenians, the inventors of hedonism, eroticism, and aphrodisiacs.
Dinner with Persephone, by Patricia Storace (1996)
“I lived in Athens, at the intersection of a prostitute and a saint.” Part travelogue, part cultural history, American poet Patricia Storace’s wry, illuminating account of the year she lived in Athens details the sublime and surreal aspects of the city.
Eurydice Street: A Place in Athens, by Sofia Zinovieff (2004)
Anthropologist Sofka Zinovieff’s account of moving to Athens with her Greek husband and two daughters captures the joyous exuberance and maddening contradictions of the city from an insider-outsider perspective.
Les Liaisons Culinaires, by Andreas Staikos (2000)
“Convincingly captures the Greek male psyche as two men duel over a woman through their cooking.”––Diane Shugart, author, Athens by Neighborhood. A contemporary Athenian love story, told through the recipes Dimitris and Damocles devise to win the affections of the capricious Nana.
