Athens Tales: Athens in Literature and Song

Thursday 26 Mar 2026

Join the book launch and discussion of Athens Tales, an anthology of one hundred and fifty years of Greek short fiction about Athens, compiled and translated into English by Joshua Barley. The evening will include an illustrated presentation of the book by the translator, and an accompanying performance of Athenian songs by mezzo-soprano Alexandra Achillea. 

This is the main UK launch of Athens Tales, recently published by Oxford University Press. The book is an anthology of the last one hundred and fifty years of Greek short fiction about Athens, comprising eighteen authors from representative periods of the city’s modern history. There are stories of war and migration, love stories and other vignettes of Athenian life, through which the reader traces the multiple transformations of the Greek capital. With each author bringing their own perspective as well as style, the anthology is both an introduction to modern Greek literature as well as a portrait of Athens through its writers. At this event, the book’s creator and translator, Joshua Barley, will give an illustrated talk weaving together some of the anthology’s lesser-known authors with the modern history of the city. He will be joined by special guests including the singer Alexandra Achillea, who will perform a selection of twentieth-century Athenian songs with piano accompaniment. 

Additional information

Joshua Barley

Joshua Barley read Classics at Oxford, studying modern Greek with Dimitris Papanikolaou, before moving immediately to Athens to undertake a scholarship for training new translators of modern Greek. In 2015 he completed an MA in Modern Greek Literature at King’s College London under Professors Roderick Beaton and David Ricks. Since then, he has worked as a freelance translator, based in Athens and Epirus. His publications include A Greek Ballad: Selected Poems of Michalis Ganas (with David Connolly), published by Yale University Press in 2019 and shortlisted for the Runciman Award, and Greek Folk Songs (Aiora Press 2022), shortlisted for the Greek State Prize in Translation.