Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957), the best known of modern Greek writers, was born in Crete and was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He studied at the University of Athens, where he received his Doctor of Laws degree, and later studied in Paris under the philosopher Henri Bergson. He served as Minister of Education of Greece (1945) and president of the Greek Society of Men of Letters. He traveled extensively through Germany, Italy, and Russia. Before World War II he spent most of his time on the island of Aegina devoting his time to his philosophical and literary work; his later years were spent in France. He died in Freiburg, Germany, in October 1957. His major work, Odyssey, has been described as the single most ambitious literary accomplishment of the twentieth century. John Steinbeck recognized him as "one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century," and he was acclaimed by Albert Schweitzer, Thomas Mann, and world critics as one of the most eminent writers of our time. His oeuvre consists of thirteen novels, including Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ (both of which were adapted into major feature films), eighteen dramatic works (of which seven were written in verse), three philosophical studies on Nietzsche, Bergson, and himself, a series of travel books (Greece, Spain, England, China, Japan, Israel, and Russia), and two books of poetry, Terza Rima and his monumental epic of 33, 333 verses, Odyssey, translated into English as The Odyssey, A Modern Sequel by Kimon Friar. He also wrote hundreds of articles for newspapers and encyclopedias, dozens of texts for Greek public schools, and numerous translations into modern Greek, among them Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Dante's Divine Comedy, Goethe's Faust, Part I, Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, Bergson's On Laughter, and Darwin's The Origin of Species.
Kostas Myrsiades, Professor Emeritus of Comparative and Greek literature at West Chester University, is a distinguished translator and Neohellenist and the first American to receive the Gold Medallion (1995) for his translations from the Hellenic Society of Translators of Literature given annually by the Greek society to a scholar from any country. His work in Greek letters is demonstrated in his 24 published books and numerous articles and translations on modern and ancient Greek literature, among them his two volume readings of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey (Bucknell University Press, 2019-2022), his many book length translations of Yannis Ritsos and Takis Papatsonis co-translated with Kimon Friar, and his translations and studies of Karaghiozis, Greek shadow puppet theater co-authored with Linda Myrsiades. He has delivered many invited lectures for such groups as the Jane Globus Seminar Series at Baruch College, the Elytis Chair Lecture Series of Poetry and Neohellenic Studies at Rutgers University, and the Embassy of Greece/National Library of Canada at Ottawa. For twenty-two years, he served as editor of College Literature, a quarterly of literary criticism, theory, and pedagogy (1990-2012), which since 1990 has been the recipient of seven awards from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals including the Phoenix Award for distinguished editorial achievement. Professor Myrsiades was also co-editor of the Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora (1991-2010), one of the leading journals in Neohellenic studies.
