A discussion of Dr. Małgorzata Cieśluk’s book *The Sea and Its Contexts in Ancient Greek Novels*

We invite everyone interested in the literary heritage of antiquity to a discussion of Dr. Małgorzata Cieśluk’s new book, *The Sea and Its Contexts in the Ancient Greek Novel: Genre and Map*. The author, a literary scholar, has long been engaged in the study of the Greek novel—a genre that took shape during the Roman Empire, and thus in an era quite distant from the time when the monumental works, still regarded today as the canon of ancient Greek literature, were created. As she writes in the introduction to her latest publication, “this ‘late childhood’ was, it seems, one of the reasons for the lack of interest on the part of ancient philologists. For no traces of systematic theoretical reflection on the genre or on individual texts have survived to our time; these texts, due to their unusual combination of the language of prose narrative with the world of fiction, deviated from the literary and reading habits dominant in Greco-Roman antiquity.” Nevertheless, the world of these novels is incredibly vivid, full of adventures and plot twists, and can certainly enchant the modern reader. A particular setting in which the events of individual Greek novels unfold is the sea and the lands surrounding it. It is precisely this geographical, yet symbolic and extremely important space in the daily lives of the ancients that is the author’s primary focus. It also serves as the key to a deeper interpretation of the surviving texts and enables contemporary readers to understand them. The conversation with the author will be moderated by the research secretary of the Pomeranian Library, Dr. Agnieszka Borysowska. Admission is free. During the event, attendees will have the opportunity to purchase the book, published by the University of Szczecin Press.