House by the River

Lena Manta was born in Istanbul, Turkey, to Greek parents. She moved to Greece at a very young age and now lives with her husband and two children on the outskirts of Athens. Although she studied to be a nursery school teacher, Lena instead directed her own puppet theater before writing articles for local newspapers and working as a director for a local radio station. Manta was proclaimed Author of the Year in both 2009 and 2011 by Greek Life & Style magazine. She has written thirteen books, all of them published by Psichogios Publications, including the bestselling The House by the River, which has sold almost 250,000 copies and is the first of her books to be translated into English. Hers is a voice to be reckoned with, and each new book is a tour de force in the Greek publishing world.Gail Holst-Warhaft is a poet and translator and has worked as a journalist, broadcaster, prose writer, academic, and musician. Among her many publications are Road to Rembetika, Theodorakis: Myth and Politics in Modern Greek Music, The Collected Poems of Nikos Kavadias, Dangerous Voices: Women's Laments and Greek Literature, The Cue for Passion: Grief and Its Political Uses, I Had Three Lives: Selected Poems of Mikis Theodorakis, and Penelope's Confession. She has published translations of Aeschylus and several of Greece's leading novelists and poets. Her poems and translations have appeared in journals in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Her Kavadias translations won the Van der Bovenkamp award from Columbia University's Translation Center, and her poem "Three Landscapes" won the Poetry Greece Award in 2001. The Fall of Athens, her most recent collection of poetry, essays, and stories about Greece, is forthcoming from Fomite Press.

“In the first of bestselling Greek writer Manta’s works to be translated into English, she demonstrates her keen perception into the human heart…Gripping, intricate story lines and [a] touching finale.” —Booklist“In this poignant chronicle, Lena Manta examines the lives of five individual girls who leave their home. While their departures are typical, the possibility of their return forms the intriguing premise of this novel…The strong prose and descriptions of Greece and other locales are engrossing.” —Historical Novel Society“A gripping and deeply touching novel, The House by the River was the page-turner of my reading month, more sentimental than I typically go in for, but intricate and well wrought. Can we ever really go home? Manta has some ideas.” —Words Without Borders