Literature Theater Performance
“Daughter of Ruins” – Meet the Author & Book Signing
Join us for an enchanting afternoon of tea, conversation, and storytelling with Yvette Manessis Corporon, International Best-Selling Author and Emmy Award-Winning Producer.
Socrates Now
Hellenic Cultural Society of South Florida, under the auspices of the Consulate General of Greece in Tampa, and Festival of the Arts BOCA, present Socrates Now by Yannis Simonides.
Dionysios Solomos’ The Free Besieged
Petros Hatjopoulos – Composer. Scholar Choir of the Archimedean Academy
Book Club – Unpacking for Greece
Meet the Author, Sally Jane Smith, will be joining us by Zoom.
Book Club: The Sleepwalker (1985) by Margarita Karapanou
Winner of the Prize for the best foreign novel (France).
Join our next event!
The Hellenic Cultural Society of South Florida’s book club showcases literary works of Greek, Cypriot, and Greek/Cypriot heritage authors. The book club aims to bring Hellenes and Philhellenes together through thoughtful and engaging conversations around books.
The book club is moderated by Athena Gounis. Athena Gounis received a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature from Florida Atlantic University in 2020. She is an Associate Lecturer at Nova Southeastern University, as well as an Adjunct Instructor at Florida Atlantic University.
After the Formalities (2019) by Anthony Anaxagorou
A collection of poetry by British-Cypriot award-winning poet, Anthony Anaxagorou. It was an honor to have Anaxagorou join via Zoom for our book discussion. It was deeply moving and inspiring to meet the poet and to hear his perspective about a people’s cathartic transformation of abuse, pain, and discrimination through his poetry.
The Virgin Suicides (1993) by Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, Jeffrey Eugenides
The topics we covered went beyond the page: time & space, Michigan’s environmental issues, community, neighbor vs. State, social (ir)responsibility, obsession & depression & the mother, mythology, symbolism, and the problematic “we” narrator.
Medea (431 B.C.) by the incomparable, Euripides
What is left to discuss 2,000 years after it first appeared at the Dionysian Festival to a livid audience? Only that the human condition hasn’t much changed over the millennia. Indeed, Medea was a monster who destroyed anyone who stood in her way…and then: apotheosis. In the 21st century, readers are still transfixed by Euripides’ play, still talking about her and Jason, and the demise of human relationships.
Zorba the Greek (1946) by Nikos Kazantzakis
Arguably the most famous modern Greek novel: Kazantzakis was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times. In this work, Kazantzakis successfully took a man and split him in two (metaphorically), and had both characters continuously dance around each other in shared experiences, finally showing that man himself is too complex to compartmentalize.
Mother Tongue (2001) by Vassilis Alexakis
Originally published in French and nominated for the prestigious Prix Goncourt, this book chronicles the quest of a man named Pavlos as he is attempting to solve the mystery of the Delphic Epsilon. The discussion quickly sparked an engaging conversation about living in two worlds, having two identities, speaking two languages, fitting in, etc.