Organized by: programme in Modern Greek Language and Culture of the University of Amsterdam and the Dutch Society for Modern Greek Studies (NGNS)

Abstract

To mark the publication of the English translation of the third novel in M. Karagatsis’s Acclimatization Under Apollo trilogy, translator Patricia Barbeito will talk about what drew her to Karagatsis’s work and what it means to bring his vivid, complex prose into English. She will reflect on the pleasures and challenges of translating the trilogy and on the questions of voice, rhythm, ambiguity, and the cultural and historical textures embedded in language.

About the speaker

Patricia Felisa Barbeito is Professor of American Literatures and Dean of Liberal Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design and a translator of Greek fiction and poetry. Her most recent full-length translations include Haris Vlavianos's poetry collection Renaissance (World Poetry Press, 2026) and the M. Karagatsis Acclimatization Under Apollo trilogy: The Great Chimera (Aiora, 2019), the two-volume Junkermann (Aiora, 2025) and Junkermann’s Swan Song (Aiora, 2026), short-listed for the International Hellenic Prize and supported by a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, and Colonel Liapkin, just published by Aiora. Her earlier translations have also received significant recognition, including:  Amanda Michalopoulou’s God’s Wife (Dalkey Archive, 2019), shortlisted for the U.S. National Translation Award; Christos Chomenidis's Niki (Other Press, 2023), shortlisted for the EBRD Literature Prize; and Elias Maglinis’s The Interrogation (Birmingham Modern Greek Translations, 2013), short-listed for the 2014 Greek National Translation Award and winner of the 2013 Modern Greek Studies Association’s Constantinides Memorial Translation Prize.