Wrongland

Wrongland balances on an edge of migration and return. It crosses from an Albania recently rid of Hoxha to a Greece riven by tensions that ultimately drive the protagonist on to America. But homecoming is the pivot — one stuck in an unavoidable vying between alternate worlds.  

The reader, a simple stranger, is introduced to Ters, a city configured by remnants from the past, a locale scored by evil — at times, gripped by good. 

GAZMEND KAPLLANI is an Albanian-born polyglot author, journalist, and scholar. For over 20 years, he lived in Athens, Greece and was one of the most outspoken journalists in the Greek press regarding migrants and minorities. 

He is the author of two collections of poetry in Albanian and four published novels (written in Greek and Albanian). His literary work centers on borders, totalitarianism, migration, identity, and how Balkan history has shaped private and public narratives and memories. 

Kapllani’s first best-selling novel, A Short Border Handbook (2006), has been translated into and published in 10 languages so far. It has been adapted for the stage by Bornholm Theater in Denmark and The National Theater of the Deaf in Greece. It won the International Literary Prize of the City of Cassino in Italy in 2017. His three other novels, My Name is Europe, The Last Page, and Wrongland, have been published so far in French, Italian, Albanian, Greek, and English; The Last Page was short-listed for the French Cezam Prix Littéraire Inter CE 2016 and awarded the literary prize of the Salon du Livre des Balkans in Paris, France. Wrongland was adapted for the stage by the Greek theater director Pantelis Flatsousis and performed in Athens, Greece, in 2022.

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.