PETER BIEN, educated
at Deerfield, Harvard, Haverford, and Columbia,
professed English literature
at Dartmouth College
from 1961 to 1997 but had
become involved
earlier with Modern Greek
literature owing to his marriage
in 1955 to a native
Greek whom he met in England
when both were at the
Quaker study center Woodbrooke. His translations of
Nikos Kazantzakis’s The Last Temptation of Christ appeared in 1960, of Saint Francis in 1962, Report to Greco in 1965, and Zorba the Greek in 2014. He also translated Stratis Myrivilis’s Life in the Tomb (1977), a poetry book by Myron Zolotakis (2023), and two poetry collections by S. S. Harkianakis (2013, 2021). A coauthored series of textbooks for learning Modern Greek culminated with Greek Today (2004). His scholarly studies include L. P. Hartley (1963), Kazantzakis and the Linguistic Revolution in Greek Literature (1972), Three Generations of Greek Writers: Introductions to Cavafy, Kazantzakis, Ritsos (1983), Kazantzakis: Politics of the Spirit (2 vols., 1989 and 2007), and Yannis Ritsos: Collected Studies & Translations (2011). He also collected, chose, and translated The Selected Letters of Nikos Kazantzakis (2012). He taught as a visiting professor at the universities of Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Melbourne, Thessaloniki twice, and Crete. A cofounder and past president of the Modern Greek Studies Association of America and Canada, he served as editor of the association’s Journal of Modern Greek Studies from 1991 to 1999.