Category: Greece

What’s left of the Night by Ersi Sotiropoulos

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What’s left of the night by Ersi Sotiropoulos

Greek fiction

Original title – Ti ménei apó ti nýchta

Translator – Karen Emmerich

Source – Personal copy

I had hoped to do this review a few weeks ago, but life has got in the way as you all know. It was one of those books I try to read every year before the Nobel prize comes out, and you look down the list of favourites for the award, and there are always a couple of gaps, and Ersi Sotiropoulos is one she has been high up in the betting the last few years. She was made a favourite by the media in Greece the year Han Kang won, so if it comes down to male and female winners, she may be a favourite for next year. Anyway this had grabbed my attention as it is set in Paris a city I have yet to visit other than in fiction. I tend to travel so much in my reading, but I am someone who hasn’t had much in my own life. It also uses the poet C.P. Cavafy when he himself visited Paris at the end of a European tour before he became the great poet and was still young and discovering his sexuality, he had a rather mad three days in Paris.

His efforts to mend the breach kept them talking late into the night, and hed been the one to suggest that his brother rewrite an old poem and change its setting to the fire at the Bazar de la Charité, from which Paris was still reeling. The occasion for the earlier version had been a snippet of conversation a friend of John’s overheard at an art opening in Alexandria. A Greek society lady, the wife of a successful merchant-the friend hadn’t given her name-was gazing at a painting of a setting sun smeared with purples and reds, and leaned on the shoulder of the man beside her, a well-known figure in the Greek community, likewise married—the friend hadn’t given his name, either-and whispered with a heavy sigh: “‘d prefer to set in your arms.” He had found it insipid, the metaphor or allegory, whatever it was, but John laughed and jotted it down. He later wrote a poem about the bombing of Alexandria in 1882 and the conflagration that followed. In the poem, the genteel lady’s words served as an ironic counterpoint to the catastrophe and the vandalism that subsequently swept the city

He spent his life mainly in Alexandria he is ion Durrell book Alendria quartet

I haven’t read a lot of Cavafy;, he has been on my radar for years, so this made me want to learn more about him. We meet Cavafy, his brother John (Ionas), as they spend what in a way is a standard few days wandering around as most tourists do, visiting the sites and some of the grubby sites of Paris, from high art galleries to low-life Brothels, we see the pair, the carefree Cavafy and his slightly more sensible brother. What we have is a man wrestling with the life events around him, both in Paris and in his own country. A boy becoming a man, almost a man becoming a poet, a man discovering his sexual appetite. This is a tale of a man struggling to break free from the conformity of the world he lives in and move to a more modern world. There are some moments of sexual awakening with Cavafy discovering his desires that remind me of the way Joyce described some of his sexual scenes, those little moments of desire.

What time was it now? The conversation tired him. The armchair with the slit was diagonally across from him. How he would have liked to see that wavy hair tumbling down its back, slipping over the brocade fab-ric, to see those eyes, those lips again. But he really needed to get to the point, so he spoke of Moréass library, which while large had seemed to him rather lacking in depth, and about the book by that young writer, Marcel Proust, Anatole France’s protégé, which hed sought in vain, and hearing his voice sound more and more shallow and macabre, he stepped like a sleepwalker into Moréas’s office and approached the gallows of the desk, in the alcove illuminated by a single gas lamp, whose sloped ceiling made it look like a lair. Or perhaps a refuge, though the light was raw and cold … He went closer, then closer still.

I loved to think of a time when Proust was the hip writer on the scene

I liked this book; it is a dreamy tale of a few days in Paris with no real plot in it, more of an overview of a man discovering himself. Maybe a sort of superpowered Bildungsroman in a weekend, what happens when your eyes are open. When you get the chance to be more than you are, the chance to discover through art and experiences new ways of thinking and erotic thoughts. The transition from the Victorian age to the new century, and all that it would mean. This is that time before the dark clouds of World War I, the middle of the Belle Epoque in France, as he discovers this. I enjoyed this book. I feel that if I were more aware of his poetry, I would like to go back and re-read it. Which of her books should I read next? Have you read any others by her?

 

Dendrites by Kallia Papadaki

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Dendrites by Kallia Papdaki

Greek Fiction

Original title – Δενδρίτες

Translator – Karen Emmerich

Source – review copy

I don’t read many books based in the US just because I didn’t read my US writers many years ago. I did. Growing up, I was a fan of Bellow, Mailer, Roth, etc and the beats. But in recent years, I have maybe read one or two books a year from the US, and occasionally, I like this book set in the US by writers. Outside the US, or like Kallia Papadaki, who grew up in Thessaloniki in Greece, then studied in the US at Bard, and Brandeis, the former in New York, isn’t that far from the setting of this book in Camden, New Jersey. The book follows the events in the 1980S, but it also follows the family history and how the town fell apart around the families. Kallia has since returned to Greece to study film studies, and this was shortlisted for the EU Prize for literature.

Her parents had met at the Campbell Soup factory, where a twenty-four-year-old Susan stacked cans on a conveyer belt eight hours a day, six days a week, and where, at twenty-eight, Basil was a manager, responsible for nearly a thousand people per shift, plus hundreds of thousands of identical cans of concentrated tomato soup. Susan had once been a student at Ohio State University, but a year before she was set to earn her degree in political science with a focus on political economy, she fell in love with the hippie son of an industrialist, dropped out, and followed him accrossthe country, all the way to Haight-Ashbury, San Fran-cisco. Their romance lasted a year and a half-one summer at a commune and two mild winters on the streets panhandling love from passersby and handing out flowers in return, until Leto and Woodstock came between them, and the harsh winters of the Northeast, which were nothing to laugh at, and so after the rain and mud of the festival they limped their separate

Susan past with the hippie and then meeting Basil

The book follows the Campanis Family from the arrival of Antoinis in a time when this part of NEW JERSEY WAS Thriving, his children find work around the Campbell soup factory, and when a daughter falls for the hippie son of the factory owner in the sixties. we see how their children in the 80s are seeing the first cracks in the town of Camden as the city is starting to change. This is a mix of all the family’s stories from the theAntoinnis arriving in the winter and making his way to the kids making their way to what happens when the American turns sour in the generation that follows. We see Minne in the eighties as an orphan. She is taken in by the hippie daughter Susan of the Campanis family, who married Bsil, her second husband, a manager at the factory. Their daughter Leto is Minie’s mate, but taking her in opens family scars, which adds to the fact that a missing child, the world they live in, and the factories close the house get boarded up. As it says at the start of the book, a town now has the highest crime rate in New Jersey.

Susan waits in the car to make sure the girl can get inside as Minnie knocks on the front door for Louisa to open, in her haste that morning she forgot her keys on the kitchen counter, but the door doesn’t open and Minnie keeps knocking with no response, so Susan locks the car, walks over to the girl and asks if there’s a back door or a window that might be open, and Minnie leads her around the side of the house, where the kitchen window looks sidelong onto the street, and Susan cups her hands and rests them against the glass to banish the glare as Minnie stands on tiptoe to peek in, only she’s too short by a good ten inches and Susan feels the chilly November wind slipping under her blouse, a wind that’s picking up, blowing down from Montreal and the distant Arctic beyond, a wind that freezes everything except time

Susan in the 80s when they take in the Orphan in to their family home

I liked this family saga, but it does jump from time to time as we build the layers of three generations of the family and how the world around them fell apart in the 80s. This is a book that the writer said she thought of after seeing a man in his nineties in New Jersey like Antoinis, who came to the US and never came back to Greece as she saw him at a Greek dinner in New Jersey. She then spent a year researching Greek Americans’ history and then two years writing it. But it is a book that could be anyone it could be an Irish American in a bar not having gone back, etc. it is also about the loss of the American dream, how those factory jobs vanished and when they did the towns built around these industries fall apart and this in the later years in this book is the aftermath of the broken American dream. This is the sort of place Springsteen used to sing about those hard streets of tough men and hard-working women and what happened when the American dream fell apart. I like how she drifts through time and stuck the time in music, places, and memories of those years. it is a book that is dark in places as it is about a place falling apart and about how those dreams that started so well fell apart, and we end up with a ninety-year-old man unable to afford the ticket home to Greece. Do you have a favourite tale in the US by a non-US writer?

Winstons score – B, solid account of the American dream falling apart over three generations.

 

Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki

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Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki

Greek Fiction

Original title – Τα Ψάθινα Καπέλα [Ta psathina kapela] (1946)

Translator – Karen Van Dyk

Source – Personal copy

I’ve been a fan of the books that Penguin has been reissuing or doing new translations of great European writers. I haven’t reviewed many books from Greece, so it is a treat to review another Margarita, born in 1919; she studied law and grew up in Athens; one wonders if this book came from her own summers as the place is the countryside near Athens. I picked this up last year, and when I saw it reviewed by Sherds tube, I moved it up the TBR. Im love coming of age works I also like books set in rural areas. Palces where the world is maybe slower and different to the cities. I also love tales of siblings. This is the tale of three sisters throughout three summers.

I lie down on the couch on my stomach. She comes over and puts her hand on my forehead. I wish she would smother me in her breasts, like when I was a baby and she was still nursing me. If she knows I’m not sick why does she ask? If she really wanted to know what was wrong I might tell her. She is about to ask – her voice gets warmer, sweeter – but she draws back. There’s always a certain trepidation between us. We can’t give away secrets that we don’t have.

‘The sun must have got to you,’ she concludes.

Too bad, Mother… And I would have told you so many things about the Land of the Houyhnhms and about Mavroukos’s grave and about the things I can see from the top of the walnut tree.

‘Rodia,’ she calls. ‘A lemonade for Katerina?

the sisters and there mother!

A few years ago this had been everywhere on blogs. It captures those inter-war summers of the twenties. You feel there is maybe some of her own life. There are three sisters. Maria is the oldest and, like many older siblings, has a bold nature; thus, as she came first, she will always try to be first at everything, if that makes sense. Well, it does in my head. Infanta is maybe a typical middle sibling unknown, quite one of those people there, but we don’t fully know them. Then there is the younger sister, Katerina. She is like many a young child let to shine by others her garden reflects her full of flowers, I loved the way we get the sisters they are typical but leap of the page as characters. SHe also ca[tures the greek countryside, It drew me back to the Gerald Durrell books also set aroundthis time the countryside is drawn well. The sister her tales of the Aunt who was raped, and the other is tales of their Polish grandmother, especially. Katerina is drawn to her family tales. The girls move into womanhood during the three summers as they talk about growing love and boys. Al this as well as the simmering feeling of their mother’s lack of having a life at times adds to a book that has growing up but also in the kids the mother maybe can see her past and as the girls fall in love and marriages and children are on the horizon will it be different for the sisters. Three Summers is a tale of those inter-war years when, in some ways, the world was brighter than ever, and chance and change were just on the horizon for them.

I remember one day when Maria, Infanta, and I were looking out the window, we saw a car pull up in front of the clinic and a young couple get out – the girl didn’t look any older than Maria.

‘It won’t hurt at all, you’ll see,’ the guy was telling the girl, and she was smiling, though her forehead was covered in sweat. A few hours later the same car came and picked them up. He helped her in. Her eyes had a deep sadness about them, and her hand seemed to want to touch her belly, to check it, but she kept pulling it away, ashamed. ‘Must be an abortion, Maria said, letting out such a screech you’d have thought they’d taken her insides out

Nicely observed how the sisters live in the world

I loved this book. It is full of the feeling of warm summers where the world is carefree, but still, shit happens. Family members have been raped things happened to our parents and grandparents and the world around them. In the books, the grece she writes about is gone. The summers they spent are gone . It also has a classic love triangle with the youngest daughter and her love for a sea captain and an astronomer, David Simmers. I hope to take this if I go on holiday to Greece soon and spend a warm summer evening drifting away in the three summers in this book drift over me as we see the three girls become women. Sat on a chair in the sun I hope I will do it one day and then review it again. Have you read this book? Do you have any other books from Greece I should read?

Winston score – A three summers, three sisters, and a world long gone as we see them fall in and out of love and grow.

Vic City Express by Yannis Tsirbas

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Vin city Express by Yannis Tsirbas

Greek fiction

Original title – Η Βικτώρια δεν υπάρχει

Translator – Fred A Reed

Source – review copy

It has been five years since I have featured a book from Greece, in fact, there are only three books on the blog. A quick look at Complete review shows there aren’t many modern greek novels out there. So I was pleased to get sent this slim novella by a young Greek writer Yannis Tsirbas. This book was shortlisted for the Greek national literature award. This book was part of the idea behind the well regarded greek Film Amerika square. The book has been published by Montreal based publisher Baraka books a few months ago.

I look him over and can’t resist the impulse to egg him on. I keep listening to his voice over the monotonous clicking of the train.

“And does it ever stink, pal! Hash and piss. They toke up, if you get my meaning, all along Heyden in old buildings just before Fillis street you get high just walking by . They kae a drag and then cut a slash right there on the sidewalk. Snort; then piss it off. Moroccans, Algerians, people like that. They’re the ones with dope; grows wild down there. And  the exact spot the Algerian was pissing the night before the Pakistani lays out his bed sheet and sells underwear the next day; see what I meean?”

The train passenger listens to him rant early on here.

This book is set on a train ride in the north part of Athens as we follow two passengers on the train one a loud mouth talking to the other about what he sees has happened to the Vic city as he starts talking about the place he knew and how it has changed in recent years with all the people that have come to Athens via Turkey. The shops they have opened and what they have changed about the Vic city. His fellow passenger keeps interrupting as we see him clearing the emails from his spam box these little glimpses of capitalism and the usual emails we all get for such things as HIV test and restaurants still being sent even thou there is an economic downturn. The book is formed as outburst each chapter is a separate monologue from one about kids at the school another start with having not eaten for a few days only a discarded sandwich and each of these tales are drawn back to the angry man’s bile about those immigrants he sees everywhere. The man tries to defend his position but as his words get harsh describing the immigrants as a cockroach. A stark view of modern Athens and how the economic crisis has brought the city to its knees but also drawn deep lines of hatred in some peoples hearts that see the city another way.

Three days. Since I ate. Three days. A cheese sandwich missing a bite. Some kid dropped it. Bang, a slap from his mom. And into the garbage. I fished it out. Ate it. Three days. A cheese sandwich. Head spinning. One step forward. Stop two steps; stop again. I’m at the square. Hungry. Thristy. Fountain. Water. I ask for money, Stretch out my hand. Ten Drachmas. Twenty. Nobody gives if you’re young. Dizzy. I remember what food was like. Hunger is like a dream. Taste of food.

Another voice describes there hunger in the chapter Happiness is a sandwich

 

Fred Reed says this book was inspired in some ways by the rise of the Golden Dawn movement in Greece a far-right party that had grabbed the populist view. The book is Greek but the beauty f the narrative that Tsirbas has used with no names and even the places are not fully seen as Athens landmarks. Means this could be anywhere in Europe where the right-wing Populist that have been taking power or gaining power. The way the Angry man talks about people you have heard many times before around Europe and here from UKIP to the national front in France. The man’s bile is so well caught as he describes the way these folk views the world full of hatred and the fact they see the world as one way, not another. They Blame immigrants for the countries woes. The book is only 90 pages and backs a punch I read it in an evening. A fresh take on the economic problems in Greece as they ride on a train.

What Lot’s wife saw by Ioanna Bourazopoulou

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whats lot's wife saw by Ioanna Bourazopoulou

What Lot’s wife saw by Ioanna Bourazopulou

Greek fiction

Original title Τι είδε η γυναίκα του Λωτ;

Translator – Yiannis Panas

Source – review copy

Well when this dropped through the door ,I wasn’t sure about it but then read the back cover and thought it was different to my usual fair .I saw a review the publisher tweeted from a sci-fi site that had called it speculative fiction (I am alien to genre fiction titles ,so I had in my head it was dystopia fiction  myself ) ,but then an interview with female first by the writer herself said she wasn’t sure where it should be placed and I ll go with that it is a book of many parts ,as such is hard to be cornered as one thing or another .Ioanna Bourazopulou started of studying hotel management in both her native Greece and then in the Uk ,she decide to try fiction in her early thirties .This is her début novel ,it won the Athens ,and was also shortlisted for three other prizes .

… The colony is not visible from the sea .On this everyone agrees,even the most experienced mariners such as captain Cortez ,who has served the consortium for twenty years and can navigate these violet waters with his eyes closed .Indeed ,that is the best way to approaches ,with eyes firmly shut .

from page four of the letter of Xavier Turia Hermengildo

So to the book What Lot’s wife saw is set in the near future .A major crack appear in the earth eating up middle Europe so Paris is now a port and new land that appear called the colony is a mix of the displaced from the disaster and people who were born and grew up there .Also when this happened it caused something called Violet salt was found in the time since then the world has slowly become addicted to this mineral .The   Governor of this region one Bera has turned up dead .This is where we are introduced to Phileas Book ,he lives in Paris and consider the best crossword compiler of his time .He has been brought in by a shadow organisation called the consortium .This consortium is the complex organisation that actually runs the colony ,a strange place with a different system of government .Book is given letters from the six people suspected of the crime and has to try to find out what happened ,he is well placed as the inventor of a complexed 3d crossword ,so we see him struggle to find the truth .

… We lifter Bera’s naked body from the bed .We sponged it down throughly and dragged it to the door .We’d decided against putting the ceremonial uniform back on since it was in shocking condition .Looking for the key ,we had ripped the pockets and the lining off .But it had been in vain .

The discovery of Bera’s body .

This book is genre busting ,it’s easy to put it with Dan Brown a man that makes puzzles solves puzzles ,sounds rather like the lead man of his books ,but no that would be putting this book down ,this is far more complexed than a Brown thriller.Another thing before I started the book I thought of was the seventies film Soylent green in which a man tries to discover where the food of the title comes from and yes in some ways this book and that film have a lot in common ,shadow secrets are abound in both .The book  also examines what happens when the goal posts are moved and society changes and adapts after a massive shift in power that saw mainland Europe disappear  cause an unfair regime and system to take hold with just a privilege few .The way the book is set out is refreshing ,in the same interview ,I read with her on female first she talks about using ,her previous experience in writing plays had helped her  in setting the book out so what we get via the letters is a collection of small scenes and as the book unfolds these scenes are almost like clues in a giant crossword each one helps the next one along giving a little more light on what had happen to Governor Bera .We also see a hidden past appear and what lead to the killing .As with the title this book maybe like the story of Lot shows a post modern Sodom and Gomorrah in the colony .

Have you a favourite Greek novel ?

Ashes by Sergios Gakas

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Ashes by Sergios Gakas

translator -Anna-maria Stanton-ife

Greek fiction

Source – review copy

Sergios Gakas studied in france in paris ,he studied theatre ,after that he took up writing first with plays for children finally turning to fiction in 2001 ,this book was published 2007 .his books have also been translated into french and Italian .

Ashes is set in Athens in 2004 just before the Olympics and there is a huge fire in a house  ,a former actress Sonia Varika is in the house she shares with a African family of refugees ,but she is the only member of the household to survive the fire ,it so happens that the next two nearest people to house ,fire and case happen to be here Ex’ lovers .one  is the landlord of the house Simeon Piertzovanis  he is a man who has drifted, he was a lawyer and now a slum landlord and a man looking for solace in the bottle  ,the other is Colonel Chornis Halkis ,he is the police man assigned to solve how the fire started and who had started it , he works for internal affairs in the Hellenic police force .So as you see this is  in the classic noir formula if you weren’t told it was Greece by the names and places it could be any where ,ex lovers ,secrets and lies ,love rivals all play a part as the  book  unfolds ,given the fact that Gakas has mainly work in the theatre before writing fiction this book is driven forward by the dialogue between the characters partly the two male leads which have some great inter actions during the course of the book .also the fact space is need for the olympics that is just round the corner and Athens is all of a flutter with that as well .

“When did you first meet her ?”

“21st July 1999″

the policeman was visibly irritated .”look- either you’ve got a very good memory or -”

“or?”

“or that date must be important to you ”

“it’s my name day – St Simeon the holy fool .It was during the break in a game – she opened her diary and wished me a happy name day – the only person to do so all day ”

Simeon and Vhronis meet early on in the book .

I like this book as soon as it hit the door step ,I love old noir films the tense and darker side of the world where no one is black or white just lighter and darker shades of grey ,so it is here the two men both have the failing but in varying degrees ,Sonia is a classic femme fatale but one who’s beauty is past and is in decline but she has at times touched these mens lives and that plays its small part in the case ,there is also pressure on Chronis from outside  and inside the police and also this leads Chronis into drugs himself much as Simeon is heading deeper into the bottle .also racism raises its head as there is a lot of tension between  the refugee /native greek communities .so all in all a classic noir reset in modern Greece .the translation works well the dialogue in particular has a good flow to it .

Do you like Noir ?

Have you a favourite greek book ?

Four walls by Vangelis Hatizyannis

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Vangelis is a greek writer living in Athens in 2001 he won the best new writer in Greece the diavazo prize ,the french translation of this particular book won the Laure bataillon for translation ,his follow-up novel stolen time has also been translated in to english by Marion Boyars .The book focuses on Rodakis a young man returning after traveling the world to his dead father’s house ,initially he decides to become a builder ,but is slowly drawn back to his father’s buisness ,which was beekeeping and honey selling ,in doing so he uncovers old wounds in the area what was his father’s secret recipe ? Also he is persuaded to take in a young women to look after .he ends up getting trapped by monks and in four walls !

S rodakis ,long since dead had been a bee keeper with enough hives to keep half the island in honey .There was a time when he had so many orders that he couldn’t keep up with them ,for ten years in a row ,he was literally overwhelmed with work ,and he no longer sold unlabeled honey whole sale .he devolped his own packaging in metal tins and pasted specially printed labels bearing his name with the picture of a bee under it and under the bee the legend –

PURE HONEY – FROM UNTRODDEN FORESTS

A description of his fathers business success

The book jumps in place like Vangelis doesn’t know where to take the story ,but the characters are enjoyable Rodakis is a man facing a decision carry on with the life he had away from the island or embrace the island and live in his family tradition ,in the later stages of the book where Rodakis is held slightly echo Kafka and there is always a sense of good versus evil as an undercurrent to the text .It shines a different light on greek island life than the one I have often seen portraied in films and books ,it brings them in to modern world kicking and screaming

Winston’s score

After couple of books that I just couldn’t score here is one I can giving it a solitary bee score ,as rodakis is like a solitary bee ,hard-working but in lots of ways alone in the world .