21 BOOKS TO CELEBRATE THE GREEK BICENTENARY OF 1821-2021
JUDGES ANNOUNCE THE LONG LIST FOR THE RUNCIMAN AWARD 2021
PRESS NOTICE
The judging panel for the Runciman Award, for books about Greece, has agreed its long list of 21 books for the competition in 2021.
Out of 79 books submitted for the Award, the judges selected 21 to form their long list, which covers books published in 2019 and 2020. The long list includes books on history, archaeology, reception of antiquity, biography, literature and myth, plus novels and literary translations – across three and a half millennia of the Greek experience.
Peter Frankopan, chair of judges, said: ‘This is a wonderful – and thrilling – long list. We have such an amazing range of books about Greece in all its forms and glories. The books we have chosen go from the siege of Troy to Herodotus through the Byzantine era to Greece in the Cold War and bohemian lives on 1960s Hydra. As we face weeks more locked down because of the pandemic, what a treat to be able to be able to dive into books written by some of the superstars of the academic and literary worlds.’
John Kittmer, chair of the League, said: ‘It is great to be relaunching the Runciman Award in 2021, when we are celebrating the bicentenary of the Greek War of Independence. I am delighted to welcome Peter Frankopan as chair of judges and Sofka Zinovieff as a new member on our panel.’
The Award Ceremony for the Runciman Award 2021 is scheduled to be held in London on 17 June 2021, as part of the UK’s celebration of the bicentenary of the Greek War of Independence. Details of the award ceremony and of the short list will be announced in due course, alongside news of the League’s new sponsorship deal for the Runciman Award.
The full long list of 21 titles is attached.
Council of the League
14 January 2021
NOTES FOR EDITORS:
Since 1983, the Runciman Award has been run annually by The Anglo-Hellenic League to reward the best book published in the previous year in English about Greece or on a Greek subject. The Award is open to books of scholarship and creativity. The competition was not run in 2020, while new sponsors were sought. A new sponsorship deal has been agreed and will be announced shortly.
The judges for the Runciman Award 2021 are:
Prof. Peter Frankopan (chair)
Dr Dionysis Kapsalis
Prof Naoíse Mac Sweeney
Prof. Judith Mossman
Dr Sofka Zinovieff
Keep up with our news on: www.runcimanaward.org and www.anglohellenicleague.org.
Enquiries to: John Kittmer (Award Administrator) info@anglohellenicleague.org
Winners of the 2019 Runciman Book Prize
The £9,000 award, sponsored by Elias Paraskevas Attorneys1933, was shared between: –
Time and its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire
Paul J Kosmin
Belknap Press of Harvard
The Transformation of Athens
Robin Osborne
Princeton University Press
Paul Kosmin’s book has far-reaching consequences for the study of history, because it touches upon two fundamental concepts by which we understand ourselves and our place in the world: temporality and historicity. Robin Osborne offers new ways of looking at the intricate interleaving of art and society and, most crucially, at the ways we, as moral agents, may transform ourselves, our sense of self and place, in trying to understand the transformation of our society.
Dr Dionysis Kapsalis, Chairman of the judging panel
Full text of speech at the award ceremony on 13th June
Also on the short list were the following four books which the judges commended highly: –
The Gardens of Corfu
Rachel Weaving with Marianne Majerus
Impress
The Excerpta Constantiniana and the Byzantine Appropriation of the Past
András Németh
CUP
The Best of the Grammarians
Francesca Schironi
University of Michigan Press
Hesiod – Works and Days
A E Stallings (trans.)
Penguin Classics
Greek culture and civilization year after year continue to be a source of inspiration.
Dr. Angeliki Lymperopoulou, judge (2014)
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