Revealing the cover of our upcoming title DEEPFAKE by Makis Malafekas and translated from Greek by Jenny Steel.
This critical smash and bestseller in Greece paints a vivid portrait of post-crisis Greek society. With his slick, sophisticated style in the tradition of Chandler with an absolutely contemporary feel, Malefakas takes us on a pacy, gripping, adventure with a denouement in a Bond-like villain’s lair in the Peloponnese.
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Stylish, philosophical literary noir against a burning Athenian background.
Washed-up writer and wanderer of Athens’ nightlife, Michalis Krokos is happier watching the Johnny Depp trial than getting down to his next book. But a visit from a mysterious prosecutor with news that his friend Rebecca, s sharp-tongued trans sex worker is in trouble with a violent far-right group shakes him out of his apathy. Krokos agrees to go undercover as a fake news copywriter inside the group’s inner circle: write a few lines, steal a few secrets. But what begins as a rescue mission soon spirals into sinister blackmail plots and political paranoia.
Darkly comic literary noir and portrait of post-crisis Greece, DEEPFAKE explores truth, loyalty and the absurd theatre of modern politics, against the background of a sweltering, sleepless, high-summer Athens.
Shortlisted for the 2025 European Union Prize for Literature.
DEEPFAKE will be available in bookshops from the 21st April 2026, and is available to preorder from our website (link in bio).
#greekliterature #greekculture #transaltedliterature #readingaroundtheworld #makismalafekas #jennysteel #foundryeditions
We are thrilled that our wonderful THE DUKE has been longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026. We are in love with its glorious writing, its unputdownable storytelling and its eponymous lead, who surely, amongst brilliant friends, a Leopard and a philosophising Sicilian detective, must enter the pantheon of great Italian literary characters to make it into English. Judges: thank you dal cuore. Readers and future readers: we hope it speaks to you as it does to us.
From the author, Matteo Melchiorre: “This is an extraordinary surprise, truly extraordinary. THE DUKE is a book that aims to speak about the margins, about places on the border, about places where time seems to have stopped, and where any future seems impossible. And yet, this story about the margins also has something to say about the wider world, far from the small, apparently insignificant corner of the planet that serves as its backdrop. The present day is also that of Vallorgàna. I am truly touched: for The Duke to be on the International Booker Prize longlist makes me more convinced that, on the margins, in these ostensible ‘wastelands’ of the West, powerful stories still lie in wait, stories that ring true, that speak to our most fundamental passions, and that help us dream about, and discover, different futures.”
From the translator, Antonella Lettieri “THE DUKE is a novel that truly spoke to my soul from the moment I started reading it, and I have been championing it passionately ever since. It’s a great honour for my work to be included in the International Booker Prize longlist, but what makes me the happiest at the moment is the thought of the many readers who will have the joy of discovering The Duke in the next few weeks. It truly deserves it, and I’m thrilled I played a role in helping it reach a wider audience.”
Do visit our website to find out more and read an extract (link in bio)
#bookerprize #internationalbookerprize #bookerlonglist #matteomelchiorre #antonellalettieri #foundryeditions #italianliterature #tranlatedliterature
Launching our 2026 Subscription!
Foundry Editions was set up because of our love of internationalism and our profound belief that reading and absorbing the stories from across our borders is a positive, uplifting and fulfilling thing to do. In today’s world, this openness seems more and more endangered, so bringing our readers books that keep a wider perspective in sight is increasingly important. If you believe this too, we’d love you to think about supporting Foundry Editions, by considering our annual subscription, either for yourself or as a gift.
Get a year of books from the Mediterranean sent to you in 2026, with early access to our seven new releases, and early invitation to our events. We will include your name, or the name of someone you choose, in our books to recognise your contribution to our publishing.
We have a wonderful line-up for you, with our first books being:
From Spain: One night in the underbelly of Madrid on the trail of a racing greyhound called Cromwell.
From France: A powerful examination of grief, family lies and the postcolonial condition in one woman’s attempt to repatriate her father’s body to France.
From Greece: A pacy, sweltering Athenian cyber thriller, exposing the realities of post-crisis Greece.
From Italy: Alan Bennett meets Fellini meets The White Lotus in this social satire about the media, the pursuit of happiness and the enduring myth of the Eternal City.
Find out more about how to support and subscribe in the link in our bio!
#foundryeditions #literature #literarygift #readingaroundthemediterranean #readaroundtheworld #subscription #support #mediterranean
Join the Queen Mary Catalan Bookclub @catalanqmul for their online event with author @anna.pazos and translators Charlotte Coombe @anywhere_person and Laura McGloughlin this month!
“Part travel memoir, part journalism, part journey of self-discovery, this is a compelling book by a young author which has become a bestseller in Spain. This is a compelling exploration of the transition from youth to adulthood in a globalized world. Blending elements of reportage and personal narrative, Pazos takes us from Barcelona to Thessaloniki, Jerusalem, and New York, tracing a restless search for identity, purpose, and belonging.Forced to return to Barcelona in 2021, she turns inward, reflecting on family, society, and the tensions of contemporary Catalonia. This session will explore themes of nomadism, ambition, dislocation, and the meaning of “coming home” in uncertain times.”
🎟️ The Queen Mary Catalan Bookclub | 26 May: 6.30pm, online.
Head to our Events highlight for the link to reserve your free spot.
#KillingTheNerve #OnlineBookClub #BookClub #BooksInTranslation #FoundryEditions
Revealing the cover of PARADISO by Michele Masneri and translated from Italian by Richard Village.
Described as a Fellini film colliding with The White Lotus, or Paolo Sorrentino colliding with Alan Bennett, the book is a darkly comic, social media generation satire on power, cultural currency and the enduring legacy of the Eternal City.
On the hottest day of the hottest summer anyone in Milan can remember, young journalist Federico Desideri is sent to Rome to meet Italy’s latest Oscar-winning director. Instead of nailing the interview, he ends up in Paradiso, a gloriously decadent estate on the Lazio coast. But is everything there as heavenly as its name suggests?
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“The book everyone is talking about. By our sharpest writer, who is as cynical as he is tender” Luca Guandagnino, Director of *CALL ME BY YOUR NAME*
“Its satire, drama and lush scenery mask a core of darkness. The decadence hidden beneath the cultural posturing and nostalgia create a surreal mix of beauty and grotesque decay.” BOOKBLAST
“A darkly comic journey through the Roman night, among eccentric characters and disenchanted glamour” CORRIERE DELLA SERA
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Nostalgic Italian style meets biting social comedy in this vivid and cinematographic novel, with hilarious cast of characters that give a warts and all look at Rome and its creatives. Ideal for lovers of the full Italian cultural experience, blending the high of cinema and literature, with the popular. The perfect Summer read!
PARADISO will be available in bookshops from the 26th May 2026, and is available to pre-order from our website now.
#itlianliterature #italianculture #transaltedliterature #readingaroundtheworld #michelemasneri #richardvillage #foundryeditions
PARADISO BY MICHELE MASNERI
The author in conversation with Antonello Guerrera
A scorching summer. An ambitious journalist. A Rome suspended between glamour and illusion.
@iiclondra and @foundryeditions are delighted to welcome Michele Masneri for a conversation on his latest book PARADISO - out soon in the English translation by Richard Village (Foundry Editions).
Sent from Milan to Rome to interview Italy’s latest Oscar-winning director, Federico Desideri is pulled into a dazzling world of appearances, ambition and contradictions in the Eternal City.
A witty and stylish social comedy for the social media age.
10 June
6.30 pm
@iiclondra
Book now – Link in bio
After the wonderful reception DEEPFAKE has had since its recent launch we wanted to introduce its author Makis Malafekas, a literary star in his native Greece.
Makis Malafekas was born in Athens and moved to Paris in 1997, where he studied art history, archaeology, and social anthropology before turning to writing. Since 2006, he has collaborated regularly with the Éditions des Beaux-Arts de Paris and contributed to the Greek and French press, including Libération, Mediapart, Eleftherotypia, and Lifo.
He has presented seminars at the Sorbonne on the history of European comics and is the author of several books, including a political essay on the years of the Greek crisis and a fictionalized biography of Miles Davis. His fiction includes his neo-noir trilogy where Deepfake is the third instalment. It was shortlisted for the European Union Prize for Literature in 2025.
On DEEPFAKE Makis writes: “Deepfake is set in contemporary Athens, it blends noir, political paranoia, and social decay into a hallucinatory portrait of a Greek society in deep crisis.
Reality is the great matrix of Deepfake. The contemporary social reality of my own environment and background, the changes, the characters, the vernacular language, and the stories that surround me all fed directly into the novel.
Athens is one of the protagonists. The novel captures the city's violent transformation from a unique and very specific Mediterranean and Balkan metropolis into an alienating, tourist oriented, pseudo fun zone. The city has its own inner voice, which expresses itself through the narrator’s feelings, projections, and recurrent dreams. Athens is omnipresent and deeply alive.“
Makis will be speaking at the European Writers Festival at the British Library this Saturday the 16th May at 2:30pm. The title of the talks is intriguingly “Secrets and Lies”, find out more by reading our May newsletter on our website (link in bio).
DEEPFAKE is out now!
#booklaunch #greekliterature #makismalafekas #athens #translatedbooks #mediterranean #greekfiction #foundryeditions
📖 𝑴𝒊𝒄𝒉𝒆𝒍𝒆 𝑴𝒂𝒔𝒏𝒆𝒓𝒊 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒔𝒐 📖
Author @michi.mas will present the English translation of 𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒔𝒐 by @foundryeditions on 𝗧𝘂𝗲𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝟵 𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝗮𝘁 𝟭𝟵:𝟬𝟬 at @toppingsedin .
On the hottest day of one of the hottest summers anyone has ever known, young journalist Federico Desideri is sent on an apparently routine assignment; to snatch an interview with Italy’s latest Oscar winning film director. But in Rome. Far from the comforts of his native Milan. When the director turns out to be elusive, and the Romans as rough as their reputation, Federico falls in with Barry Volpicelli, the rumoured inspiration behind the winning movie’s lead character – a seductive, fast-talking, America-obsessed rogue, and instead of finding his interviewee, he finds himself in Paradiso-Barry’s crumbling country estate on the Lazio coast, with an eccentric cast of inhabitants who seem frozen in time.
Members, students, and friends of the Institute can access discounted tickets for the event via our website!🎫
Epigraphs are always important, giving a lovely insight into the inner workings of an author’s thoughts. The ones Ève has chosen to start Repatriation with act as both a wonderful introduction to and encapsulation of the book. Not only do they show her astonishing erudition and poetic sensibility but they also beautifully capture some of the themes in the book that I found so moving and that made me want to publish it.
Let’s start with Apollinaire on grief, because Repatriation’s first chapter is one of the most stunning descriptions of grief I’ve read and struck me very deeply. On line one, the news of Annabella’s father’s death blasts into an otherwise entirely normal day. Her reaction, dislocation, discombobulation, incomprehension throws her life in the air. Her life is changed forever in a second, and yet around her, the world and life go on as if nothing has happened.
Through the book’s beautiful and innovative use of language and narrative arc that is so dependent on flashback, we get to see Annabella’s gradual discovery of her past and herself, something that is beautifully expressed in the quotation from Sophocles. As Ève says, the book is structured like an examination and the further Annabella advances into her grief, her history and the process of getting her father’s body back to France, the more things she discovers about herself.
The final quotation from a Foundry favourite Cristina Campo, perfectly sums up Annabella’s journey. It is at the same time a very real struggle wading through faceless bureaucracy and cold corruption to repatriate a body, but at the same time a glorious extended metaphor for her journey towards a far greater understanding of the trauma at the core of her existence and, consequently, who she really is.
- Richard Village, Editor
Find out more about REPATRIATION by Ève Guerra, translated by Clodagh Kinsella on our website.
#Repatriation #FrenchLiterature #BooksInTranslation #Epigraphs #FoundryEditions
They do say “never judge a book by its cover”. We admire the sentiment and aspire to that, but somehow that applies more in life than in literature! For all booklovers, having a beautiful book and bookshelf can definitely add to the whole immersion into a cracking work and build inspiring, beautiful surroundings in which to read.
Having just published our thirteenth book, we thought now was a good time to talk about the collection as a whole when it comes to design. We love and collect old series, be they Penguin Classics, Teach Yourself by English University Press from the 40s and 50s or Everyman’s Library. The aesthetic of a series makes them design icons, and in a small way we wanted to do something similar with our books.
Our approach was to start with what we do: Literature from and about the Mediterranean. With inspiration from great European publishing houses whose designs we adore, we chose to go with a recurring look and theme that would make our readers feel immersed in Mediterranean visual culture without being repetitive. We had to choose blue and white and patterns that evoke those seductive waves of the Middle Sea, while the splashes of orange bring that warmth that we all crave.
We work with the wonderfully talented Hélène Marchal at Murmurs Design to develop the covers. Each one starts with the language, the place and the storyline. Each language or place has a recurring theme. We dive into the cultural aesthetics to find patterns that we love and that can evolve into different designs for each new title.
Each of our titles is numbered in order, as every good series should do in our humble opinion. It hopefully allows the obsessive collectors like ourselves to understand Foundry Editions books as a whole and where each title sits within the series.
We hope our covers catch your eye and make you smile. We can’t wait to reveal our latest title, from an entirely new language and geography, which adds one more design family to the series.
#foundryeditions #bookcollection #beautifulbooks #readaroundtheworld #bookcover #bookcoverdesign #murmursdesign #helenemarchal
DEEPFAKE by Makis Malafekas and translated from Greek by Jenny Steel is OUT NOW!
Stylish, philosophical literary noir against a burning Athenian background
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“The novel’s main them is the exploration of repressed desires and fantasies, that intersects with the contemporary possibility of creating a deep fake, a profound falsehood, in which it is no longer possible to detect the falsity”
DIONISIOS SKLIRIS, FREAR MAGAZINE
“A reflection on a generation whose time has come to govern in a world where you don’t know who’s who.”
CHRISTOS NATSIS, THE PRESS PROJECT
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Washed-up writer and wanderer of Athens’ nightlife, Michalis Krokos is happier watching the Johnny Depp trial than getting down to his next book. But a visit from a mysterious prosecutor with news that his friend Rebecca, a sharp-tongued trans sex worker is in trouble with a violent far-right group shakes him out of his apathy. Krokos agrees to go undercover as a fake news copywriter inside the group’s inner circle: write a few lines, steal a few secrets. But what begins as a rescue mission soon spirals into sinister blackmail plots and political paranoia.
Darkly comic literary noir and portrait of post-crisis Greece, *Deepfake* explores truth, loyalty and the absurd theatre of modern politics, against the background of a sweltering, sleepless, high-summer Athens.
DEEPFAKE was shortlisted for the 2025 European Union Prize for Literature.
Find out more on our website (link in bio)
#bookluanch #greekliterature #makismalafekas #readaroundtheworld #mediterranean #greekfiction #jennysteel #foundryeditions #athens #exarcheia
I’ve been diving into the work of other translators and picked up these two gems from Foundry Editions. The Duke has been deftly translated by Antonella Lettieri, who extraordinarily is not a native English speaker but manages to convey all the subtle intricacies of character and place so artfully in English. In fact, the slight Italian-ness of the tone transports you even further into rural Italian village life and its particularities. Then Spanish Beauty is an entirely different story, like Sexy Beast with a touch of Almodovar, translated with punch and humour by Richard Village. Chapeau to Foundry Editions for featuring the translators’ names so prominently on the front cover 📚 @foundryeditions@antonella.translates@richardbvillage
