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Introducing The Ingenious Language: Nine Epic Reasons To Love Greek, Andrea Marcolongo writes that her book demands passion and a willingness to be challenged. 'It’s a literary tale about a few particular aspects of the magnificent and elegant ancient Greek language – its concise, explosive, ironic, open-minded modes of expression.’
It is also a fascinating series of essays, combining history, philosophy and memoir. Written for those who have never studied Greek and are curious, those who have studied it and forgotten it, or anyone reading Greek literature in translation today, The Ingenious Language is a bestseller in Italy and, in translation, has been embraced by readers around the world.
Mary Norris, author of an infectious celebration of Greek culture, landscape and language, Greek To Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen, reviewed The Ingenious Language for The New Yorker magazine earlier this year. In this online event, these two writers share their experience of the exhilaration and revelation of reading Greek.
In partnership with the Italian Cultural Institute and Literature Ireland.
This event will be available to watch online here on Saturday November 14th, 1.15 p.m.
Andrea Marcolongo is an Italian journalist, writer, lecturer, Classics scholar and former speech writer for Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. The Ingenious Language: Nine Epic Reasons To Love Greek was a bestseller in Italy, and her work has been published in twenty-seven countries. She is also the author of The Heroic Measure, a book on etymology, Alla fonte delle parole, and on Virgil’s Aeneas, La lezione di Enea.
Andrea Marcolongo writes for the cultural supplement of La Stampa, served as president of the 2019 Festival de l’histoire in Blois, and was a finalist at the Prix des Lecteurs in France. She lives in Paris.
Mary Norris’s Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen (2015), a New York Times best-seller, was based on her experience of working as a copy editor at The New Yorker magazine for more than thirty years. Her latest book, Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen (2019), is about what she did in her spare time: travel in Greece, study Greek (ancient and modern), act in Greek tragedies.
Mary Norris made a series of videos about language for The New Yorker (Comma Queen) and writes regularly for the magazine’s website. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Wall Street Journal, and Times Literary Supplement. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, she lives in New York City and Rockaway Beach.
