Travel Writing
The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller (1941) — Miller's account of his travels through Greece just before World War II. Rapturous, digressive, and full of life, it captures a Greece that has changed enormously but whose spirit feels familiar. Widely considered one of the great travel books.
Dinner with Persephone by Patricia Storace (1996) — A memoir of a year spent in Athens on a literary fellowship. Storace, a poet, is a sharp and tender observer of how ancient myth still lives inside modern Greek life. One of the most intelligent books about the country.
Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese by Patrick Leigh Fermor (1958) — Leigh Fermor walked into the remote, tribal, and then barely visited Mani peninsula and wrote about what he found with extraordinary grace. The companion volume, Roumeli, covers northern Greece. Both are essential reading for anyone going beyond the islands.
Fiction
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis (1946) — The Greek novel. Kazantzakis's exuberant, life-hungry Zorba has done more to shape the outside world's image of Greece than almost any other work. Read it before you go; read it again after.
Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières (1994) — A love story set on Kefalonia during the Italian and German occupation in World War II. Enormously popular and worth reading before a visit to the island.
The Island by Victoria Hislop (2005) — Set on Spinalonga, the island leper colony off eastern Crete, spanning generations. A good read if you are visiting Crete.
Ancient Classics
The Odyssey by Homer — The oldest adventure story still in print, following Odysseus through a decade of wandering after the Trojan War. The Emily Wilson translation (2017) is the best modern English version.
The Oresteia and Antigone — Aeschylus and Sophocles respectively. Both are strikingly readable in good modern translations. Attending a performance at Epidaurus will make the experience complete.
The Histories by Herodotus — The world's first work of history, covering the Persian Wars and much of the known ancient world. The account of the Battle of Marathon and the stand at Thermopylae is as gripping as any novel.
Background Reading
The Story of Greece by Michael Scott — A solid single-volume overview of Greek history from antiquity to the present day, accessible and well-paced.
Circe and The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller — Retellings of Greek myth that have introduced an enormous new readership to these stories. More fiction than scholarship, but vividly done.