title: Greece: A Traveler's Literary Companion (Traveler's Literary Companions)
author: Artemis Leontis
description: Greece is a heady experience, with the hot sun and whitewashed homes, the sea, the food and people, the ruins, culture, and history. No matter which guide books one takes and how well versed one is in Homer and Sophocles, who doesn't sail into Piraus feeling woefully ill-prepared to appreciate the glories of Greece? The 24 finely crafted short stories by modern Greek writers (many appear in English for the first time), arranged geographically (by Athens, the Peloponnese, Crete, and so on), help weave together some understanding of ancient, literary, and modern Greece.
zlib_text: ## CHAPTER 1: BLAST TO THE PAST
  
  
  ### BARCELONA, SPAIN
  
  
  ![Image](images/0001-1.jpg)
  
  
  **HAPPY** was not a word often used to describe Artemis Fowl’s bodyguard.
  _Jolly_ and _contented_ were also words that were rarely applied to him or to
  people in his immediate vicinity. Butler did not get to be one of the most
  dangerous men in the world by chatting with anyone who happened to stroll
  past, unless the chat concerned exit routes and concealed weapons.
  
  
  On this particular afternoon Butler and Artemis were in Spain, and the
  bodyguard’s Eurasian features were even more taciturn than normal. His young
  charge was, as usual, making Butler’s job more complicated than it needed to
  be. Artemis had insisted that they stand on the pavement of Barcelona’s
  Passeig de Gràcia for over an hour in the afternoon sun with only a few
  slender trees to provide them with cover from the heat or possible enemies.
  
  
  This was the fourth unexplained trip to foreign locations in as many months.
  First Edinburgh, th