The Fourth World

by Daphne Athas, Unknown Author

In her second novel, The Fourth World (1956), Daphe Athas portrayed the lives of blind children at the Canopus Institute, which they call “See-Eye.” Telling the story of the institute’s authoritarian director, Dr. August, a new staff member, Actia Clewes, and Ted Balkan, a teacher at the institute who is also blind himself. “The Fourth World will seem a grotesque world to some—an almost unbearably cruel world to others. But few readers will deny the depth of the author’s penetration into its shadows, the intensely dramatic impact of the scenes that she has contrived there.”—New York TimesAbout the Athas (1923–2020) was a fiction writer and professor who mentored several generations of writers. Born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, to a wealthy Greek-American father, her family moved to Chapel Hill in 1938 seeking greater business opportunities during the Great Depression. Athas graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1943, joined the Office of War Information in New York City, and taught at the University of Tehran as a Fulbright professor of American literature. She published three novels, a book about her travels in Greece, a collection of poetry, and a memoir about her life in Chapel Hill. She was known for her stylistics course, Glossolalia, encouraging students to experiment with grammatical style and rhythm, which she turned into a book, Breaking the Rules.

Unknown Binding

Published January 1, 1957

About the author

Daphne Athas moved to Chapel Hill as a teenager and graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1943. As a writing student, she worked with Betty Smith and Phillips Russell. In 1964, she joined the English department of the University of North Carolina to teach creative writing. Her best-known work is Entering Ephesus (1971), a coming-of-age novel set in an academic village (like Chapel Hill) where her characters are a mix of intellectuals, poor southerners, and Greek immigrants.