News

The first phase of voting for the Public Book Awards ‘Pens of the Year’ concluded with 132,457 votes, with readers highlighting their favourite books by choosing from eight different award categories.‘Apenanti’ by Thodoris Papaioannou and Irini Samartzi was voted by the reading public as one of the top 10 children’s books of the year!The second phase of voting has already begun and will run until 22 May. Let’s vote for the book “Apenanti” to reach the top of children’s literature: http://bit.ly/Apenanti2016

The 400th anniversary of the deaths of Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare provided the perfect occasion for Greece to celebrate World Book Day 2016 last Saturday, 23 April.The walk, which took place in central Athens from early on Saturday morning, featured 24 stops filled with books and brought readers closer to the authors of the books as well as to their ‘paper heroes’.Ikaros Publications celebrated World Book Day with an event at our historic bookshop, where authors, poets and illustrators who publish their books with us turned out in force. The event was honoured by a large crowd of people, readers young and old, who also wanted to celebrate this unique day of the book in their own way. In the morning, our young friends met and chatted with: Maria Angelidou, Myrto Delivoria, Christos Kourtoglou, Antonis Papatheodoulou, Alekos Papadatos and Irida Samartzi, whilst the luckiest ones even secured signed copies of their books!The event then continued with the presence of distinguished authors: Athanasios Alexandridis, Yannis Antiochos, Christos Giannaras, Kiki Dimoula, Aristos Doxiadis, Lelis Bey, Dimitris Nollas, Dimitris Oikonomou, Thanos Stathopoulos and Giorgos Psaltis. Seventy-three years after its foundation, Ikaros remains a vibrant organisation, a contemporary publishing house that collaborates with leading creators in their fields and constantly renews its readership.The grand celebration concluded with best wishes for World Book Day and for a society in which reading books will be an integral part of our daily lives.

‘Democracy’, the graphic novel by Alekos Papadatos, Avraam Kawa and Annie Di Donna, just a few days after receiving an award from the Greek Section of the IBBY – Greek Children’s Book Circle with the Award for Author of a Book for Adolescents and Young Adults, for teenagers and young adults, has won the awards for Best Script and Best Comic by Wacom at the 2016 Greek Comics Awards!The Greek Comics Awards, the only awards of their kind in the Greek comics scene, took place on 15 April in the auditorium of the French Institute and form part of the Comicdom Con Athens Festival. The event was hosted by stand-up comedian Byron Theodoropoulos, who entertained the audience and set the tone for the event.The graphic novel, released a few months ago, shows us how democracy was forged as much by chance and historical circumstances as by the actions and courage of resourceful people dedicated to their cause.“Democracy” is a superb example of the kind of comic we want to read again and again, a beautiful historical fairy tale, at a time when we need it most.” Nikos Giakoumelos, Smassing Culture

On Sunday 24 April at 20:30 at the Benaki Museum (138 Piraeus Street), Filippos Tsalachouris’s oratorio ‘The Passion According to Mark, Opus 94’ will be performed, featuring interludes of poetry written by the poet Giorgos Psaltis.The work, which is being staged as part of the 2016 Greek Music Festival, is based on the Gospel of Mark and recounts the final hours of Jesus, from his arrest in Gethsemane to the Crucifixion.Giorgos Psaltis comments on his collaboration with Filippos Tsalachouris and on the way he worked on ‘The Passion According to Mark’, Opus 94: ‘In July 2015, Filippos Tsalachouris suggested that I write the stanzas to be sung as interludes in his oratorio The Passion According to Mark. They struck me as a continuation of the libretto I had written for his liturgical drama The Hour of the Last Supper (Benaki Museum, 2012) and as an interesting departure from what I had planned to write that summer. He wanted them by the end of September. However, the general state of the country, the poems and other texts I was working on, and my own state of mind did not allow me to immerse myself in the Gospel according to Mark in order to write something useful for the structure of the narrative from the arrest of Jesus in Gethsemane to the crucifixion.In September, he sent me the structure of the work — the passages from the Gospel with the points where the stasima would be heard. I put aside whatever I was writing at the time, and read one passage from Mark at a time, then struggled to convey the need that Jesus’s experience described in that passage evoked in me. I wanted each song to constitute a poetic commentary on the narrative of the Passion, without prematurely giving away the twists and turns of the story, even though the cock that crows twice, Pilate, Barabbas and so many others are etched in everyone’s memory. I worked in complete silence, or in bars, or to the sound of a compressor from a building site next to my home. One song at a time, towards a single point of human experience. Five soloists, two choirs and an instrumental ensemble take part, conducted by the composer. The work lasts 80 minutes. Further information about the event can be found on the Benaki Museum website. Books by Giorgos Psaltis published by Ikaros:Panagies Elenes (2014), poetry; Please don’t dig here, a dog is buried here (2011), poetry; Return to the United Country (2008), poetry