With a special pre-festival event and an internationally recognized guest, the translator and author Peter Constantine, the 4th Chania Book Festival (CHF) begins, which will take place from June 25 to 29, 2025. The Festival, organized by the Municipality of Chania in co-organization with the Region of Crete, this year has as its central theme: “Our home, the planet” and aspires to highlight literature as a tool for understanding and connecting man with the world around him.
The start of this year’s program is marked by the appearance of Peter Constantine on Saturday, May 17, 2025, at 8:00 PM, at the Center for Mediterranean Architecture (Grand Arsenal), in a preview event of a festival that is expected to be more dynamic than ever.
Peter Constantine, an award-winning translator and professor at the University of Connecticut, has made a decisive contribution to the dissemination of Greek and world literature, translating great works from nine languages. Among others, he has translated authors such as Rousseau, Machiavelli, Tolstoy, Günter Grass, and Ismail Kandare, while he has edited important anthologies of Greek poetry. His contribution to the dissemination of Greek-language literature is undeniable, which makes his presence in Chania particularly important, as emphasized.
During the event, Constantine will speak with journalist and member of the PVH project team, Kyriaki Beyoglu, on the occasion of the publication of his first novel The Bought Bride (Pataki Publications, 2025) – a fictionalized version of the true story of his Greek grandmother, from the depths of the Caucasus to the culmination of the 20th century Odyssey.
The choice of Constantine for the first official action of the 2025 FBC underlines the emphasis that the festival places this year on literary translation, not only as a tool for cultural outreach, but also as a means for the Greek public to become acquainted with global literary movements and, correspondingly, for Greek writing to travel abroad.
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