100 books like Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Greek mythology that reads like a storybook.

I never thought I would enjoy reading Greek mythology. But how Fry wrote it is really amazing. Now, when I go to a museum and see an ancient painting depicting Greek Mythology, I am often able to explain what is visualised in the artwork.

In the book, Zeus and the other Gods get a true character and the fights they have are depicted in a way that you still want to read it till the end, even if you know what the end will look like. 

My current can’t-put-this-down read, The Island of Missing Trees is set between present-day London and Cyprus in the 1970s during the break-out of the civil war on the island.

It’s a family drama told in third person but interspersed between chapters following the lives of Ada and her star-crossed parents, a Greek man and a Turkish woman, there are whole sections of this book told from the perspective of a fig tree.

I particularly enjoy all of these sections because I never thought I might find myself one day sympathising/empathising with a tree and yet somehow, Shafak is really able to make me feel for that lonely fig tree whose comments on the world and human nature are so profound and thought provoking, they’ve invaded even my dreams. 

The Colossus of Maroussi is a book all wanderers and visitors of Greece should dip into at least once.

It’s a travelogue that drips with humour from the brilliant Henry Miller. It is a collection of fantastic prose inspired by the islands and mainland that Miller visited in the early 20th Century. It offers great wit and wisdom as well as cultural insights that still feel incredibly relevant to Greece today, despite the book being published in the 1940s.

When I think of great travel literature, this book is a classic. It speaks on the Greek people - their strength, stoicism, and humour - and chronicles a time in Greece before mass tourism descended and changed the islands forever.

This book is pure poetry to me. It follows the lives of three sisters on the precipice of adulthood during 1930s Greece.

I love that when it was published in the 1940s here in Greece, it was seen as a scandalous piece of literature. I can see why - Liberaki writes fervently and openly about the trials and tribulations of female teenhood, detailing gossip, romance, and even the loss of virginity with such poise and vim that it is still relevant and relatable to women today.

It was the kind of book that my own Greek Yiayia (grandmother) was absolutely not allowed to get her hands on. This book, for me, has it all. It’s bucolic, romantic, and oozes beautiful imagery of the hot, dry summers in Athens and the surrounding countryside. A perfect character study.

Katherine, a Greek immigrant to the US, took her American children to Greece in the late 1930s to live on her family’s farm and escape from the Great Depression. Unfortunately, the arrival of the Nazi invaders trapped the family in Greece during the Occupation and the end of World War II. Based on a true family story, American Kid movingly describes the experiences of the children in the remote mountain village of Katherine’s birth, and their efforts to survive the occupation of their home by Nazis. Would they ever see their beloved America again? An authentic glimpse of the devastating war’s impact on innocent youth and the value of hope.

Lovers of World War 2 and the interwar years will like this book. It partly goes into life during Nazi-occupied France during WW2 and its aftermath. Although this book is about one woman’s revenge against her former lover, it gives the reader an idea of what life was like during the occupation. It helped me understand the problems people go through and who their real friends are when faced with adversity. Even though people may do wicked things to others or to those who have harmed them, their conscience gets the better of them when it comes to helping those who have shown them kindness. Their good side is revealed; so therefore, it is always good to find the saving grace rather than just the bad qualities in people.

 A scathing and detailed analysis of the Ango-French invasion of Greece and the military, political, and strategic debacle that ensured as they attempted to open a third front against the Central Powers. If you’ve ever wondered why this isn’t much talked about, or even mentioned, Abbott explains it.

The Kapetanios put me on a course that I have expanded upon since 1980. 

It’s a close-up and dramatic account of the civil war that took place in Greece, beginning in the period of the Axis occupation, but continuing off and on in the post-WWII period to 1949. In 1980, I had wanted to travel to Greece but could not. The best I could do was find a good book on its modern history. 

I found The Kapetanios at People’s Books (now sadly defunct) in Milwaukee, WI. There are reasons to question its historical accuracy – normal for any history – but the book and its subject matter grabbed me and never let me go. I’d still recommend the book to anyone interested in that tragic, important, and avoidable conflict.

After forty years, this remains the outstanding work on its crucial subject matter. 

For me it sets the standard for expert treatment of great power archival materials that pertain to extremely controversial questions. In this case, what was the role of the British foreign policy operatives, from top to bottom, in the making of the Greek Civil War? 

The book’s author, along with his wife and colleague, helped me come to terms with British role in Greece, but also with the more general problem of the raw power maneuvers of great power states against weaker ones.

This book brings back to life the pioneering British archaeologists who, basing themselves at the atmospheric Villa Ariadne, rediscovered the prehistoric civilisation of the Minoans at Knossos on the island of Crete.

I love this book because it brings back memories of when I excavated at Knossos—the local workmen lowered an apprehensive me into an ancient well to measure its depth and I stayed next door to the Villa, taking walks in the surrounding countryside carpeted with wildflowers.

The Villa was purloined by the Germans in World War II. The book also taught me about the bravery of the Cretan resistance to the Nazis, including the dramatic kidnap of a German general on the Villa’s doorstep.