A book examining reports on Cyprus compiled by Greece’s intelligence service in the summer of 1974 was among four titles honoured at this year’s Cyprus Review Book Awards. The nation-wide journal presented two prizes in its Politics and History category and two in Law, for books published in 2025. Two more prizes for lifetime achievement were presented to criminologist Andreas Kapardis and historian Nasa Patapiou at the ceremony held on 2 November at the University of Nicosia.
Here are the winners of the Cyprus Review Book Awards 2026:
Follow THE FUTURE on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X and Telegram
(English translations of Greek book titles are ours)
Tasos Sakellaropoulos And The Intelligence Reports Of 1974
In November 2024, Greece’s National Intelligence Service (EYP) released 58 bulletins about Cyprus from July and August 1974. The reports, compiled by its predecessor KYP, cover the coup against President Makarios, Turkish military preparations, and the invasion. Historian Tasos Sakellaropoulos places them in context in Απόρρητα έγγραφα της ΚΥΠ για το Κυπριακό. Σχολιασμένα – Ιούλιος-Αύγουστος 1974 (Classified KYP Documents on the Cyprus Question. With Commentary, July–August 1974). Published by Metaixmio on 13 November 2025, the book also won the Costas Kyrris Award in History.
In an interview with Athens Voice, Sakellaropoulos said the reports show that Greece’s intelligence service had information about Turkish military preparations. He pointed to poor communication within the Greek authorities and argued that the junta’s leadership failed to respond adequately to those preparations.
Sakellaropoulos currently heads the Benaki Museum’s Historical Archives. The book follows his research on the relationship between the Greek military and politics, an extension of his 2024 study Ειρήνη, πόλεμος, πολιτική, συνωμοσίες. Οι Έλληνες αξιωματικοί 1935–1945 (Peace, War, Politics, Conspiracies. Greek Military Officers, 1935–1945), published by Patakis.
Nadia Kornioti And The Violence Of The 1960s
Nadia Kornioti’s book examines the violence that broke out between Greek and Turkish Cypriots in December 1963. In Law’s Politics: The Cyprus Troubles, 1960–1968, she explores whether the violence qualified as a non-international armed conflict under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. That provision sets minimum standards for the humane treatment of people taking no active part in hostilities.
Kornioti follows the events and their consequences through March 1968, drawing in part on records from the International Committee of the Red Cross. She considers how people on the island experienced those years and how the language used to describe the violence has influenced its interpretation. The book, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2025, won the Junior Researcher Award in Law.
Kornioti had already examined the application of Common Article 3 to Cyprus in her doctoral research at the University of Central Lancashire. She has also written with Demetra Loizou about how the European Court of Human Rights deals with armed conflict and international humanitarian law.
Maria Tselepou And How Cyprus Presents Itself Abroad
“Cyprus in your heart” is one of the tourism slogans Maria Tselepou discussed with Philenews when describing her book on how the Republic of Cyprus has built its reputation abroad. For Tselepou, tourism promotion is part of that history, alongside the country’s cultural work and its efforts to communicate with audiences overseas.
Her book, Κυπριακό Εθνικό Σήμα. Η εξέλιξη της δημόσιας, πολιτιστικής και τουριστικής διπλωματίας της Κυπριακής Δημοκρατίας (Cyprus’s National Brand. The Evolution of the Republic of Cyprus’s Public, Cultural and Tourism Diplomacy), examines state archives, press coverage and promotional material. Interviews with former ministers and tourism officials help her examine how decisions about the country’s image were made. Published by Papazisis in 2025, it received the Junior Researcher Award in the Politics and History category.
Petros Constantinides And Fundamental Rights At Work
One example Petros Constantinides muses over in his book, Η οριζόντια επίδραση θεμελιωδών δικαιωμάτων και η υποδοχή της στην κυπριακή έννομη τάξη (The Horizontal Effect of Fundamental Rights and Its Reception in the Cypriot Legal Order), is a contract clause restricting an employee from working for a competitor. The question is whether, and how, a court should take fundamental rights into account in a dispute between private parties. In legal scholarship, this is known as the “horizontal effect” of fundamental rights. His book also considers freedom of expression at work and compares the approach taken in Cyprus with those of other jurisdictions.
Published by Sakkoulas in 2025, the book also earned Constantinides the Constantinos Emilianides Award in Law. A lecturer in public law at the University of Limassol, he also published an earlier book on the subject in 2016 and has written for The Cyprus Review about how the Supreme Court of Cyprus has dealt with it.
Lifetime Achievement Awards
Andreas Kapardis And What Witnesses Remember
What a witness remembers can depend on the conditions in which they saw an event and on how they were questioned afterwards. Witness memory is among the subjects Andreas Kapardis examines in Psychology and Law: A Critical Introduction, first published by Cambridge University Press in 1997. The book also looks at how false confessions arise and how courts make sentencing decisions.
The Cyprus Review gave Kapardis its Lifetime Achievement Award in Social Sciences for his contributions to criminology, judicial psychology and criminal sciences. An emeritus professor at the University of Cyprus, he has also served as a prison governor in Cyprus and as a founding member and vice-chair of the country’s Parole Board.
Nasa Patapiou And Cyprus In The Venetian Archives
Historian Nasa Patapiou has published findings on water supplies in Nicosia and Famagusta under Venetian rule and on work at the island’s saltworks. The Cyprus Review awarded her the Lifetime Achievement Award in History for her research on Venetian Cyprus, especially her work at the State Archive of Venice.
Patapiou worked at the Cyprus Research Centre and served as cultural attaché at the Cypriot Embassy in Athens. For the centre’s 1996 edition of La guerra di Cipro, edited by Gilles Grivaud, she translated Pietro Valderio’s account of the 1570–1571 war into Greek and provided commentary.
In 2013, Patapiou and Chrystalleni Lazarou published a study of the production and trade of hiromeri, a Cypriot ham. The application to register Hiromeri Pitsilias as an EU protected geographical indication, published in the EU’s Official Journal in 2020, cited their study in its account of exports to Syria in the eighteenth century.
