The Green Shore of homeland
Famous Greeks

The Green Shore of homeland

Natalie Bakopoulos was born in Detroit to a Ukranian mother and a Greek father. She was brought up in a family overwhelmed with father’s nostalgia for his homeland. However, during the ‘70s, she was not really acquainted to Greece but through family stories and her Greek grandmother’s voice over the phone. Due to distance, as she claims, she was motivated to put her imagination to work painting the portrait of Greece and thus developed a strong liking towards writing.

Bakopoulos first authored short stories for magazines and literary collections that earned her prizes, while also experimenting on screenwriting and essays. She has received the Hopwood and O. Henry awards and the Arthur & Mary Platsis Award honouring works on Greek legacy.

She currently teaches literature at the University of Michigan, where she also received her first Greek Language and Literature courses of the Modern Greek Program.  Bakopoulos also writes on Greek issues for the New York Times and for other prestigious American newspapers and magazines.

The Greek edition of her first novel The Green Shore was published in Greece in 2012, following the American publication. The story of two sisters Sophie, 20, and Anna, 16, takes place in Athens and Paris and follows the women’s heartbreaking love and resistance experiences during the 1967 dictatorship. The novel’s title may sound familiar, as Natalie took it as an excerpt from one of her favourite poems by famous Greek poet Kostas Karyotakis, “Will the gift and good fortune be granted/To us that one night we can go to die/There on the green shore of our native land?” Poets Karyotakis, Seferis and Anagnostakis are Natalie’s favourites.

COMMENTS

  Comments: 1

  1. dimitrios katseas

    mprabo kirie Kapela go! ahead.


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