This year’s National Book Collecting Prize for young Australian collectors goes to Michael Alexandratos...

Mr. Alexandratos of Roselands, New South Wales, collects books published in Greek in a variety of subjects, but with the curatorial principle that they are essentially “marginal literatures: written by marginalised people, or about topics and in genres that never secured a place in the canon. In many ways, they are at odds with established narratives of “Greece” and “Greekness”.”

He cites early encounters with the music genre of rebetika and the work of folklorist Elias Petropoulos as being pivotal in pointing him in his current collecting direction (Petropoulos wrote about subversive topics like prison life, gay slang and brothels). A subsequent meeting with Athenian bookseller Nektarios Papadimitriou and the discovery of zine series Biblio-curiosa: Unusual writers/Strange books helped coalesce his collection around the word “weird”.

His collecting project is constrained by geography and illuminates the gap that can exist between institutional and private collecting priorities. “Although my drive to seek out the rare and unusual began in my early teens, this collecting mania also served practical purposes. As a researcher and publisher, it became a necessity to build my own archives. Living on the other side of the world, I lacked easy access to Greek libraries, and even then, when I made trips to Greece I realised there were serious gaps in their collections. This is partly due to Greece’s unreliable legal deposit system, and that the books which interested me were never acquisition priorities for major institutions. Today, my collection numbers around 100 titles, dating from the late 19th century to the present day, spanning rare pulp fiction works, bibliophilic art editions and out-of-print paperbacks, all linked by their odd and erratic content.”

The collection that Mr. Alexandratos continues to build has a purpose beyond his own enjoyment. He aims to bring these neglected books into dialogue with world literature. “My collection made…sense as the starting point for a writing project, narrating and contextualising these books anew for non-Greek audiences.”

There were four entries in this year's iteration of the prize, all of which were worthy. Mr. Alexandratos’s essay impressed as being passionate and well thought out, and the judges felt they could appreciate the collection without necessarily knowing the books. His bibliography was praised for reading like a bookseller list and his wish list was cogent and offered a clear focus for the future.

There was some discussion between the judges around - and acknowledgement of - the difficulty of collecting fugitive literature - titles which may not appear in lists at the time of publication, often self-published or published by lesser known or niche publishers. It was noted as a layer of challenge in his collecting project and considered interesting.

Mr Alexandratos will receive a prize to the value of nearly $2000 AUD which includes a cash component, a return flight to the 2026 ANZAAB Rare Book Fair in Melbourne, gift vouchers to spend with ANZAAB members and membership subscriptions to the Bibliographic Society of Australia and New Zealand (BSANZ) and the Books Collectors’ Society of Australia (BCSA). He has been invited to speak about his prize-winning collection at this year’s Melbourne Rare Book Week in July (date and time tbc).

The National Book Collecting Prize for young Australians to the age of 35 was founded by Dawn Albinger of Archives Fine Books in 2019. Archives Fine Books administers the prize and is its major sponsor. The prize is also supported by The Book Collecting Society of Australia (BSCA), the Bibliographic Society of Australia and New Zealand (BSANZ) and private philanthropy.

The esteemed judging panel this year was comprised of bookseller Hamish Alcorn, Owner, Archives Fine Books; book collector Prof. Chris Browne, Program Director, Melbourne Rare Book Week; Simon Farley, Fryer Librarian at the University of Queensland and Jerelynn Brown, most recently Manager of Collection Development and Acquisitions, State Library of New South Wales.