Review

Andrea Marcolongo's Nine Epic Reasons to Love Greek gives little incentive to battle through learning the famously difficult language

By Mark Thomas
February 1 2020 - 5:00am

For unfortunates like me who know little Latin and less Greek, Andrea Marcolongo offers a brisk, bracing wake-up call. Characterising ancient Greek as "concise, explosive, ironic, open-ended", Marcolongo expects us to digest her book, learn the alphabet appended at the back, then be shamed into studying the language.