What do you think?
Rate this book
Ada Hikâyeleri
Paperback. 12,50 / 19,50 cm. in Turkish. 128 p. Translated by Asli Çete "Modern Yunan nesrinin en büyük yazari." — Milan Kundera "Papadiamandis, modern Yunancanin azizidir." — Times Literary Supplement Aleksandros Papadiamandis; Yunan tarihine, kutsal kitaplara ve yerel halkin inanislarina göndermeler yapan masalsi bir öykü dünyasinin kapilarini Ada Hikâyeleri ile araliyor. Asli Çete'nin Yunancadan çevirisi ve ön sözüyle... Birdenbire battigini, dalgalarin arasinda kayboldugunu gördüm. Artik tereddüde yer yoktu. Kayik, kizin oldugu yerden yirmi kulaçtan fazla uzaktaydi. Bense sadece bes alti kulaç mesafedeydim. Derhal kayanin üstünden denize baliklama atladim. Suyun derinligi iki boydan fazlaydi. Kumla kapli dibi neredeyse boyladim. Kaya, tas olmadigi için basimi vururum diye korkmuyordum. Hemen yüzeye çikip dalga köpüklerinin arasina geldim. Kizin battigi yerin bes ya da daha az kulaç uzagindaydim. Suyun köpügünde olusan sarmallar, zavalli kiz için bir anda meydana gelmis islak bir mezar gibi olacakti. Bir zamanlar denizde çirpinmis insani bir varligin geride biraktigi tek iz!.. Iki üç güçlü kulaçla az zaman içinde yanina vardim. O güzel vücudun asagida sallandigini gördüm. Denizin dibine mi daha yakindi, dalganin köpügüne mi? Ölüme mi, yoksa yasama mi?.. *** O saf, temiz kizin, ise yaramaz yasamimin sadece birkaç dakikasinda üzerimde hissettigim zarif, yumusak vücudunu daha ne kadar animsayacaktim? Sanki bir hayal, bir hülya, büyü gibi bir seydi. O güzide, meleksi temas, milletin tüm o çikarci kucaklasmalarindan, sahte dostluklarindan, yalanci asklarindan ne kadar da farkliydi! Seve seve kucakladigim o yük agir gelmiyor, ruhumu dinlendiriyordu.
127 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
2 people are currently reading
175 people want to read
About the author
Alexandros Papadiamantis
38 books199 followersAlexandros Papadiamantis (Greek: Αλέξανδρος Παπαδιαμάντης) was an influential Greek novelist and short-story writer.
He was born in Greece, on the island of Skiathos, in the western part of the Aegean Sea. The island would figure prominently in his work. His father was a priest. He moved to Athens as a young man to complete his high school studies, and enrolled in the philosophy faculty of Athens University, but never completed his studies.
He returned to his native island in later life, and died there. He supported himself by writing throughout his adult life, anything from journalism and short stories to several serialized novels. From a certain point onwards he had become very popular, and newspapers and magazines vied for his writings, offering him substantial fees. Papadiamantis did not care for money, and would often ask for lower fees if he thought they were unfairly high; furthermore he spent his money carelessly and took no care of his clothing and appearance. He never married, and was known to be a recluse, whose only true cares were observing and writing about the life of the poor, and chanting at church: he was referred to as "kosmokalogeros" (κοσμοκαλόγερος, "a monk in the world"). He died of pneumonia.
He was born in Greece, on the island of Skiathos, in the western part of the Aegean Sea. The island would figure prominently in his work. His father was a priest. He moved to Athens as a young man to complete his high school studies, and enrolled in the philosophy faculty of Athens University, but never completed his studies.
He returned to his native island in later life, and died there. He supported himself by writing throughout his adult life, anything from journalism and short stories to several serialized novels. From a certain point onwards he had become very popular, and newspapers and magazines vied for his writings, offering him substantial fees. Papadiamantis did not care for money, and would often ask for lower fees if he thought they were unfairly high; furthermore he spent his money carelessly and took no care of his clothing and appearance. He never married, and was known to be a recluse, whose only true cares were observing and writing about the life of the poor, and chanting at church: he was referred to as "kosmokalogeros" (κοσμοκαλόγερος, "a monk in the world"). He died of pneumonia.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
November 5, 2018
This collection of 12 short stories was written by an author apparently renowned in his native country of Greece, though not translated into English until long after the fact; Papadiamantis lived from 1851-1911, while this collection was published in 1994. The translation is fluid, but a side effect of the long delay in translation is that its contemporary literary English makes it difficult to feel that one is reading a 19th century work.
The stories, set on Papadiamantis’s home island of Skiathos, chronicle the lives of humble people living there. Recurring themes and situations include marriage, the death of children, the injustice of the dowry system,* young men yearning for beautiful women, and middle-aged women whose lives are full of suffering. The portrayal of late-19th century Greek island life is interesting; it appears to be a society divided between the sea and everyday agricultural work, taking place in fields set far from the towns where people live.
I have to admit this collection didn’t do much for me. It wasn’t Papadiamantis’s much-discussed conservatism, which despite a couple of cringeworthy gender-essentialist passages doesn’t really seem to define the text. Perhaps it’s because, as the translator discusses in her introduction, several of these plots are taken from ancient Greek writings or mythology; perhaps the author was too devoted to recycling plots rather than allowing them to develop organically. Or perhaps these characters just didn’t strike a chord in me for any of the nebulous reasons that fiction can fall flat for some readers. But although I can’t point to a specific flaw in the crafting of the plots or characters, I was largely indifferent to these stories and eager to move on from this collection.
* In a couple of stories, families are forced to give up practically all they own to secure the marriage of a daughter, the parents moving out of their home to include it in the dowry, or a family giving up half of its land and mortgaging the other half. These situations were apparently based on reality; the author himself, through choosing the less-lucrative career of a writer, saw 3 of his 4 sisters unable to ever marry. But I’m baffled at how such a system can survive: if most women can’t afford to marry, then most men will also die single; from an economic standpoint you’d expect the dowry demands to decrease dramatically rather than allow a system in which most people never marry. The missing link would seem to be large numbers of men dying disproportionately young, which we don’t see here, unless we’re meant to conclude that they’re all setting sail for the Americas and most never return? The author of course had no need to explain their own society to contemporary readers, but the translator might have done so.
The stories, set on Papadiamantis’s home island of Skiathos, chronicle the lives of humble people living there. Recurring themes and situations include marriage, the death of children, the injustice of the dowry system,* young men yearning for beautiful women, and middle-aged women whose lives are full of suffering. The portrayal of late-19th century Greek island life is interesting; it appears to be a society divided between the sea and everyday agricultural work, taking place in fields set far from the towns where people live.
I have to admit this collection didn’t do much for me. It wasn’t Papadiamantis’s much-discussed conservatism, which despite a couple of cringeworthy gender-essentialist passages doesn’t really seem to define the text. Perhaps it’s because, as the translator discusses in her introduction, several of these plots are taken from ancient Greek writings or mythology; perhaps the author was too devoted to recycling plots rather than allowing them to develop organically. Or perhaps these characters just didn’t strike a chord in me for any of the nebulous reasons that fiction can fall flat for some readers. But although I can’t point to a specific flaw in the crafting of the plots or characters, I was largely indifferent to these stories and eager to move on from this collection.
* In a couple of stories, families are forced to give up practically all they own to secure the marriage of a daughter, the parents moving out of their home to include it in the dowry, or a family giving up half of its land and mortgaging the other half. These situations were apparently based on reality; the author himself, through choosing the less-lucrative career of a writer, saw 3 of his 4 sisters unable to ever marry. But I’m baffled at how such a system can survive: if most women can’t afford to marry, then most men will also die single; from an economic standpoint you’d expect the dowry demands to decrease dramatically rather than allow a system in which most people never marry. The missing link would seem to be large numbers of men dying disproportionately young, which we don’t see here, unless we’re meant to conclude that they’re all setting sail for the Americas and most never return? The author of course had no need to explain their own society to contemporary readers, but the translator might have done so.
September 6, 2021
i don't know why the occasional mentions of turkey made me weirded out
June 26, 2022
Papadiamantis’in (1851-1911) bu öykü kitabı maalesef beklentilerimin altında kaldı. Öykülere genelde karanlık bir hava hakim. Ada insanlarının zorluklarla dolu hayatları anlatılıyor. Özellikle de kadınların uğradığı haksızlıklar. (Yunanistan’da o dönemde gelin verecek aileden istenen başlık parası uygulamasının ne kadar acımasız olduğu da hayret verici doğrusu.) Ama öyküler bence biraz basit ve de basmakalıp şekilde kurgulanmış. Ben en çok derlemenin son öyküsü “The American: A Christmas Story”yi sevdim. Bu arada yazarın bir romanı ile bazı öykü derlemeleri Türkçe’ye de çevrilmiş, bunu bilmiyordum. Tematik olarak aynı paralelde düşünülebilecek bizim Sait Faik Papadiamantis’ten en az 3-4 gömlek üst düzeyde bir yazar deyip çekileyim huzurdan.
March 6, 2013
It is a shame that so few American readers know the work of Alexandros Papadiamantis. These short stories are set in the Aegean island of Skiathos, where the author lived at the turn of the ceutury. Each story creates a world in itself-- and two are masterpieces: "Fortune from America" and "Civilization in the Village."
Unlike many writers who handle "folk" life, there's no fake sentimentality here. Children die unmourned; brides are prized only for their dowries, and women are old at thirty-five. But there's an undercurrent of lyricism, too. My Greek husband tells me that much of the prose is vernacular Greek, and lost in translation. But as with Chekov, enough isn't.
Unlike many writers who handle "folk" life, there's no fake sentimentality here. Children die unmourned; brides are prized only for their dowries, and women are old at thirty-five. But there's an undercurrent of lyricism, too. My Greek husband tells me that much of the prose is vernacular Greek, and lost in translation. But as with Chekov, enough isn't.
November 26, 2025
Dedication to what you know is doomed, pursuit of what's already been lost - these ridiculous years it takes for us to understand that there has never been an alternative.
Read
August 13, 2016When I learned that C.P. Cavafy and Odysseus Elytis both admired the prose of Alexandros Papadiamantis (1851-1911), I knew I had to read some of his work. Advised that his shorter pieces are much better than his novels, I read the collection Tales From a Greek Island and then the novella The Murderess, held to be his best work.
In light of Elytis' leftist leanings, I was more than a little surprised to find that Papadiamantis was a religious reactionary, who objected to the emancipation of women and bewailed democracy and other European habits as unsuitable for the Greeks. In one of his stories he appears to regret that Greek women no longer wore veils, which they had been obliged to do under the Ottoman occupation. Nonetheless, he was no misogynist; he was well aware of the complete lack of freedom of women in 19th century Greece, and he portrayed this fact in many of his stories with complete sympathy for the women, who quite often are the main characters.(*) And he was no elitist - his stories are generally set in the lowest economic strata.
Since he was so conservative, it was not surprising to find that he wrote much of his work in the antiquarian katharevousa Greek, which harkens back to the Greek spoken in Athens in the 4th century BCE, though apparently he leavened it with his own idiosyncratic diction. In his dialogues, however, he used contemporary colloquial speech, even dialect when appropriate. The translator, Elizabeth Constantinides, of Tales From a Greek Island assures us that his diction is completely unique and that a page of his prose can be immediately identified. Unfortunately, there is nothing linguistically notable about her translations, just a very few half-hearted gestures towards slang in some of the dialogue. Nonetheless, something else does come through - a combination of empathy, watchfulness, and relaxed patience - which I have not encountered before.
The short stories in Tales are set on the island of Skiathos, where Papadiamantis was born and raised, and with empathetic, if sometimes sardonic humor provide a rather grim picture of 19th century Greek island life. Though Papadiamantis never married, nearly all of these stories revolve around marriage, one way or another.(**) If not about marriage in the offing - the dream of a marriage - or about a marriage being lived, then about the onerous dowries families needed to pay to marry off their daughters(***) and the extremes to which this custom forced them to go, such as marrying their daughters to extremely unsuitable men in order to reduce the dowry, or waiting 20 years for a son to return from America with enough money to allow his younger sister to marry. Just two of many.
Inevitable consequences of this custom are the regret and resentment parents experienced when a daughter was born. Needless to say, in some parents this found rather extreme expression - murder; or, if not murder, then murder just barely averted, stayed in the last moment, as evidenced in this collection.
But in The Murderess (1903), one strides directly to multiple murder. With such a title I am hardly spoiling the story if I reveal that a grandmother, a herbalist and healer by trade, again on the isle of Skiathos, reviews her harsh life and the prospects of her daughter and newly born, sickly granddaughter and decides that girls would be better off dead.(****) Remarkably, Papadiamantis is able to make this most unappealing premise into a powerful little book by combining Raskolnikovian self-laceration with a touch of Medean madness in the idyllic setting of an Aegean island and using finely judged flashbacks to fill in background and change the pace and mood. Very nicely done all around.
I share now Cavafy's and Elytis' admiration for Papadiamantis' work, but it is high time to leave behind the sad and claustrophobic society of 19th century Skiathos. Aποχαιρετιστήριος !
(*) In The Murderess all the main characters are women, while the men are jokes or monsters.
(**) At this time, in this place - a small island where everyone knew everybody's business - marriage was the only possibility for a man and woman to ease their passion. With all of the narrow minded busybodies poring over other people's lives, even the innocent were in trouble...
(***) In one story the parents of the bride signed over to the groom their house and furnishings and paid cash! In another, the family signed over half their property and mortgaged the rest to provide cash.
(****) Her parents solved the dowry problem by marrying her off to a simpleton who was satisfied with a perfectly worthless dowry...
In light of Elytis' leftist leanings, I was more than a little surprised to find that Papadiamantis was a religious reactionary, who objected to the emancipation of women and bewailed democracy and other European habits as unsuitable for the Greeks. In one of his stories he appears to regret that Greek women no longer wore veils, which they had been obliged to do under the Ottoman occupation. Nonetheless, he was no misogynist; he was well aware of the complete lack of freedom of women in 19th century Greece, and he portrayed this fact in many of his stories with complete sympathy for the women, who quite often are the main characters.(*) And he was no elitist - his stories are generally set in the lowest economic strata.
Since he was so conservative, it was not surprising to find that he wrote much of his work in the antiquarian katharevousa Greek, which harkens back to the Greek spoken in Athens in the 4th century BCE, though apparently he leavened it with his own idiosyncratic diction. In his dialogues, however, he used contemporary colloquial speech, even dialect when appropriate. The translator, Elizabeth Constantinides, of Tales From a Greek Island assures us that his diction is completely unique and that a page of his prose can be immediately identified. Unfortunately, there is nothing linguistically notable about her translations, just a very few half-hearted gestures towards slang in some of the dialogue. Nonetheless, something else does come through - a combination of empathy, watchfulness, and relaxed patience - which I have not encountered before.
The short stories in Tales are set on the island of Skiathos, where Papadiamantis was born and raised, and with empathetic, if sometimes sardonic humor provide a rather grim picture of 19th century Greek island life. Though Papadiamantis never married, nearly all of these stories revolve around marriage, one way or another.(**) If not about marriage in the offing - the dream of a marriage - or about a marriage being lived, then about the onerous dowries families needed to pay to marry off their daughters(***) and the extremes to which this custom forced them to go, such as marrying their daughters to extremely unsuitable men in order to reduce the dowry, or waiting 20 years for a son to return from America with enough money to allow his younger sister to marry. Just two of many.
Inevitable consequences of this custom are the regret and resentment parents experienced when a daughter was born. Needless to say, in some parents this found rather extreme expression - murder; or, if not murder, then murder just barely averted, stayed in the last moment, as evidenced in this collection.
But in The Murderess (1903), one strides directly to multiple murder. With such a title I am hardly spoiling the story if I reveal that a grandmother, a herbalist and healer by trade, again on the isle of Skiathos, reviews her harsh life and the prospects of her daughter and newly born, sickly granddaughter and decides that girls would be better off dead.(****) Remarkably, Papadiamantis is able to make this most unappealing premise into a powerful little book by combining Raskolnikovian self-laceration with a touch of Medean madness in the idyllic setting of an Aegean island and using finely judged flashbacks to fill in background and change the pace and mood. Very nicely done all around.
I share now Cavafy's and Elytis' admiration for Papadiamantis' work, but it is high time to leave behind the sad and claustrophobic society of 19th century Skiathos. Aποχαιρετιστήριος !
(*) In The Murderess all the main characters are women, while the men are jokes or monsters.
(**) At this time, in this place - a small island where everyone knew everybody's business - marriage was the only possibility for a man and woman to ease their passion. With all of the narrow minded busybodies poring over other people's lives, even the innocent were in trouble...
(***) In one story the parents of the bride signed over to the groom their house and furnishings and paid cash! In another, the family signed over half their property and mortgaged the rest to provide cash.
(****) Her parents solved the dowry problem by marrying her off to a simpleton who was satisfied with a perfectly worthless dowry...
May 18, 2017
I liked this book much more than The Murderess, also by Papadiamantis. The simple, understated storytelling nevertheless constantly stirs an undercurrent that you think would eventually break, but his stories take unexpected turns and sometimes these conflicts just stay below the surface, much like the sea he grew up next to. He reminds me of Alice Munro. No tricks, and no name-drops. Just beautiful human stories. No wonder Papadiamantis is considered a giant in modern Greek literature.
January 2, 2014
Perhaphs the original greek version is better than the english translation, however I felt that the metaphors came across as obvious and the prose as generally flat and lacking in richness. I have no doubt that Papadiamantis is an interesting and important writer but i found this translation to be sort of boring unfortunately
February 3, 2023
Greek Book #6
I’m an idiot and Greek names confuse me and I didn’t realize I had already read something by this author (The Murderess). Luckily this collection of short stories is good! Lots of death, pettiness, drinking, gossip, and budding sexually!
Written and taking place in the second half of the 19th century on the small provincial island of Skiathos, these stories have a folklore vibe and I’m hesitant to make any conclusions about modern Greek culture based on them. It seems akin to making conclusions about modern American culture by reading, say, As I Lay Dying. But still.. maybe, just maybe. Perhaps, um, one maybe could?
I tiptoe carefully because I’m ignorant and I also don’t want to offend. But I wonder about the dowry system, for instance. Does it still exist? If so, is it still as oppressive as it seems in this book? And are Greeks still so patriarchal? Do they believe in the evil eye? Do they get into each other’s business so much? And do people still put coins on musician's foreheads? Again, I’m not judging—we have Qanon, Facebook, and hot dog eating contests. I’m just trying to understand this crazy world.
Ok, let me reset.
This is an exotic Winesburg, Ohio with better endnotes.
I’m an idiot and Greek names confuse me and I didn’t realize I had already read something by this author (The Murderess). Luckily this collection of short stories is good! Lots of death, pettiness, drinking, gossip, and budding sexually!
Written and taking place in the second half of the 19th century on the small provincial island of Skiathos, these stories have a folklore vibe and I’m hesitant to make any conclusions about modern Greek culture based on them. It seems akin to making conclusions about modern American culture by reading, say, As I Lay Dying. But still.. maybe, just maybe. Perhaps, um, one maybe could?
I tiptoe carefully because I’m ignorant and I also don’t want to offend. But I wonder about the dowry system, for instance. Does it still exist? If so, is it still as oppressive as it seems in this book? And are Greeks still so patriarchal? Do they believe in the evil eye? Do they get into each other’s business so much? And do people still put coins on musician's foreheads? Again, I’m not judging—we have Qanon, Facebook, and hot dog eating contests. I’m just trying to understand this crazy world.
Ok, let me reset.
This is an exotic Winesburg, Ohio with better endnotes.
April 26, 2022
Papadiamantis' work feels elemental. He observed people of great faith and superstition, and their stories are often intense. His style is spare, the writing and stories both as clean as a Greek village in hot weather.
Papadiamantis lived the same kind of life as his stories told. He was austere, monk-like. His connection to the church and monasteries is evident in the stories. But he is not blind to faults of church members or the church. His humor is wry, but insightful.
These stories are of another era, but tell the story of a place quite well.
Papadiamantis lived the same kind of life as his stories told. He was austere, monk-like. His connection to the church and monasteries is evident in the stories. But he is not blind to faults of church members or the church. His humor is wry, but insightful.
These stories are of another era, but tell the story of a place quite well.
August 19, 2024
Papadiamantis has become one of my favourite writers, he writes with light humor plastered in each sentence. He writes stories of lives that have loved and lost and suffered and wept. His imagery of the island that he grew up in paints nature and trees and water as living moving familial presences. Me gusta!
November 29, 2025
It’s complicated to rate a book of short stories, as they’re all different. Some of these I loved, some may have been slightly lost in translation, but most of Papadiamantis’ work stay with me long after I read them. They’re haunting and fascinating and they paint a complex and often painful picture of Greece during his time, especially to a frequent visitor. I’m very glad to read his writing.
April 4, 2018
A collection of short stories, some of them I've read before, some not. First time reading them in English.
I'm a bit embarrased to admit that I often I feel more comfortable to read this author in English than in its original Greek, because Papadiamantis was writting in katharevousa and actually on a weird mix of katharevousa, contemporary Greek, archaic expressions, local Skiathian dialect and ecclesiastical terminology which adds a very unique effect and feeling on his texts, but makes it difficult to decipher sometimes. Naturally, something is lost in translation here, but in general the penetrating Papadiamantis' look onto the lifestyle and society of Skiathos island in the 19th and very early 20th century is revealing a world (thankfully) lost long ago. The narration of each story flows effortlessly and makes for an interesting read.
The editor's notes can come very handy for people not familiar with the era or the author and I'm glad this edition exists, so that a wider crowd could get in touch with Alexandros Papadiamantis' work.
I'm a bit embarrased to admit that I often I feel more comfortable to read this author in English than in its original Greek, because Papadiamantis was writting in katharevousa and actually on a weird mix of katharevousa, contemporary Greek, archaic expressions, local Skiathian dialect and ecclesiastical terminology which adds a very unique effect and feeling on his texts, but makes it difficult to decipher sometimes. Naturally, something is lost in translation here, but in general the penetrating Papadiamantis' look onto the lifestyle and society of Skiathos island in the 19th and very early 20th century is revealing a world (thankfully) lost long ago. The narration of each story flows effortlessly and makes for an interesting read.
The editor's notes can come very handy for people not familiar with the era or the author and I'm glad this edition exists, so that a wider crowd could get in touch with Alexandros Papadiamantis' work.
April 5, 2017
This is the original book that made all those writers flock to Greece and wrote stories about their life there from Durrell to Mamma Mia. Written in the late 1800s, there is a variety of tales that live today as much as they did back then. Good read.
August 26, 2021
That was my first book I read from a Greek writer. Culture and stories are very close and warm. I learned how much we are similar, how much we are human from 200 years before.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews