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THE BOOK OF KATERINA
by Auguste Corteau

Translated from Greek by Claire Papamichail

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Orthokostá
A Novel
by Thanassis Valtinos

Translated from the Greek by Jane Assimakopoulos and Stavros Deligiorgis; Foreword by Stathis N. Kalyvas

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At Twilight They Return
A Novel in Ten Tales
by Zyranna Zateli

Translated from the Greek by David Connolly

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The Great Chimera
by M. Karagatsis

Translated from the Greek by Patricia Felisa Barbeito

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God Is My Witness
Makis Tsitas

Translated from the Greek by Joshua Barley

New Life

The story of Serenity starts in July 1923, when a faction of refugees from Phocis (who may have origin in the Asia Minor) like many other displaced during the Great War (1914-1918) or during the population exchange in the aftermath of Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), is allowed to settle in Anavyssos – a barren, desolate and rugged, untilled coastal land, close to the salt pans in the Saronic Gulf. Initially afraid of the wilderness and full of doubts and fear about their new home, the refugees finally settle with the allotted lands and build their shacks with the government help. However, the locals from the surrounding do not favour their presence and are determined to create trouble for them if necessary.

Among the refugees are Dimitris Venis and Irini–who once belonged to the nobility, and is unhappy and unsatisfied with their status, is filled with sullenness all the time and irked with her husband, a doctor by profession who has chosen to settle here. Another couple of Fotis and Eleni is close to the Venis family and all of them had lived closely during their stay on Aegina during the Great War. Soon after they’re allotted lands for shacks and cultivation, and as the land was famous site of excavation for buried antiquities and tombs, Fotis and Eleni, with the help of an elderly water diviner, after arduous digging come upon a buried kouros in their land. Meanwhile Fotis waits for the opportune moment so that he can bargain a good sum for the antiquity he has found, a heavy downpour and flood hits the settlement, and brings tragedy to his hopes.

Shortly Anna and Irini’s sister Maria come from Athens to join them at Anavyssos. Maria is gradually losing her eye sight and her only hope is to wait for the return of her son Angelos, who was separated from them during the war and was taken prisoner, like many relatives of the people from the settlement. Similarly, Anna, the daughter of Venis couple, is full of hope to reunite with her young lover Andreas, who was together with Angelos. The first part of the novel ends with the arrival of Andreas, and sadly with the news that Angelos is no more, but Dimitris asks him not to reveal it to Maria.

We see many lives connecting in Anavyssos – some lost family members, some are displaced from their homeland and are left with nothing but memories and hope to finally find the peace. Irini is suffused with desperate hopelessness, frustration and humiliation, making her feel estranged among her own, while Dimitris and Fotis are trying to find a purpose and riches even if it means following fascination. Dimitirs seeks the courage, or Serenity as he tells his daughter, from the biographies of Napolean and Captain Scott and is hopeful of his rose garden, and Fotis tries to make a fortune from a fish boat and trade. Andreas is burdened and traumatized with the memory of hardships and loss he had to endure, and thinks that his childhood was taken away from him, leaving him with sad experience, restlesssness and desolation only he can understand. However, Anna tries to rekindle his failing spirit and hope. They make a trip to Aegina in Fotis’s boat and find a new meaning to their shared memories and love on the island. However, with the arrival of some new faces in the settlement, things take a different turn and the brightness and vigor we feel coming in the lives of Dimitris, Andreas and Anna is shattered again in brutal and tragic sequence of events.

Serenity is a novel full of voices. As refugees struggle to harmonize and find livelihood and peace in their new home, the author carves out their natural voices from the depths of their past, aspiration and dreams and makes the texture of this new life so palpable through scenic narration, we feel the turmoil left by the war, and human sensitivities shaped by this unprecedented new challenge. The composite nature of the text welcomes humans as well as the nature as a force in this new life. For instance, even salt pyramids are free to observe the Phocians and their new rituals. At moments, it looks like a connection between humans and the Earth is finding a language through the novel. Also, the author takes the liberty of coming face to face with the readers – and this makes the work more personal for both him and us – in an enigmatic¹ tone.

1.       A sky-blue line above the dust of the earth, containing trees and tombs, and flashes of lightning that are drawn, erased and plunged into the sea, and beyond everything the silence, the final boundary of the world–what, I wonder, is the fate of the world? Oh reader, I am trying to tell the fate of a few people; I would like to tell of the bones the sea will cover and whiten after numberless years. And I know nothing more worthy of ridding man of the bitterness of uncertainty than the silence and certainty of the stars.

The primordial feelings and faith surrounding one’s homeland; hope and desire to endure the new existence; characters trying to give new meaning to their lives since their past aspirations have been left in disorder and are now just an unrealized dreams: these are some of the ideas in the novel. And, author is so caring of his characters that he even takes a step forward to tell their agony, aspirations or mere visions, as if rescuing their voices, outside the quotations, and in bright pieces in between the text, and they prove to be burst of sensitive experience and existential surge of emotions^{2, 3} with poetic charm and depth.

2.       How fine it would be if everything were so futile that people would not even try to do anything! And so they would sit plunged in certainty, their limbs at rest, feeling no pain… Many things seemed beautiful in this world, but how could she know? She and all others of her position only knew what was useful.

3.       You can get used to anything. You can become used to looking inside yourself and seeing how naked and desolate it is, as if you are the first on the earth and beginning the history of mankind, now and alone. You become used to believing in nothing, not dreaming, denuded of everything that reconciles us with people and life. You become used to destroying yourself and others, and everything inside you becoming silent – Fear, imagination, pity. Everything, therefore, is simply a matter of degree: until you fall. Thus you can grow used to this, too: telling stories to a mother every day about a child who will not return.

We feel the terrain of the coastal land and also the terrain of human feelings. Nothing escapes the author’s vision of accommodating all the elements of survival, interdependence and interactions between all forces and elements of nature and humans. The monotony of existence and hope to reconcile to everything to find a new meaning of life; the melancholy of happiness and anguish to hear a piece of good news; clinging on the hope and abyss between the old and new lives – these intersperse in the story.

The central theme of Serenity⁴ is the force of aspiration and peace found through fascination, through voyage, accomplishments, existence and hope.

4.       Serenity! In the calm, the tumult, in the water that relaxes as it forms a cloud, in the clouds that clash during the storm and try to cast out their water and find peace, in the passions of people who struggle and fight, in the people who suffer because they were not destined to do anything, in the bodies that struggle for love, in the stars that tumble down at night, in the earth that turns, in dreams and deeds, in everything the search for a lost balance, a ceaseless recomposition.

Set in the aftermath of Greco-Turkish War, Serenity is a representative work dealing with the crisis left in the wake of the war and displacement. A humane, evocative and sensitive exploration of refugees, the novel is a classic text to understand and feel closely not only the suffering left by the war but also the aspiration to new life and adaptation.

Author: Ilias Venezis

Translator: Joshua Barley

Publisher: Aiora Press

Author's Photo Credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elias_Venezis

Review Copy Courtesy: Aiora Press

Murder Mystery from an Ionian Island

In the opening of the novel, Rodini appears before the notary Tapas asking to arrange a loan for him and on pushed hard tells the notary in private that the Count Nannetos, the wealthiest in the Cephalonia, who is unwell, has made him his heir to the inheritance after his death. To satisfy the curiosity of cunning Notary, Rodini further goes to tell him that – believing that to confide to a notary is safe – despite Yerasimos being the Count’s nephew, with all the shame and trouble he has caused, Count Nannetos has disinherited him. 

But it happens that Tapas’s daughter is in love with Yerasimos and he has promised to take her as his wife, and still believes that after his uncle dies he’ll inherit his riches. But Tapas, with the intention of saving her daughter – whom he loves immensely and is ready to take any trouble for her – from marrying Yerasimos, who’ll have nothing after the death of the Count, discloses the secret to Yerasimos what he heard from Rodini. Yerasimos, anxious and angry, then urges Tapas to write a false will from the Count that will guarantee his inheritance and dismiss the privately made will, and confirms that he’ll get the signature of the Count by hook or by crook. And, in return Tapas also promises to make the will valid when he gets it, and when the time is right.

The Next day, Count Nannetos is found murdered on his bed. Tapas appears at the murder scene and tries to influence and settle things quietly, but when it fails, he helps the investigation leading to suspect Rodini who had left in the morning to meet his mother. Knowing well that Yerasimos killed the Count after receiving the signed will, Tapas suggests that he leave Argostoli.  The investigation leads to Rodini’s arrest and the privately made will he presents at the court is dismissed and finally the court rules for the death penalty.

When Marina, the daughter of Tapas, finds out that Yerasimos had been cheating on her and is going to marry her friend in Lixouri, she poisons herself and leaves a letter to her father. I’ll leave it to the readers to find out what happens next in this murder mystery and to find out who will hang in the gallows!

The novel is set on Cephalonia (One of the Ionian Islands) in the early 1820s. First published in 1855, The Notary gives us the flavor of classical murder mystery tales. The plot tapestry may not be intricate like in the modern day novels, yet is riveting. There are elements of romanticism in the story and in the dialogues that may lessen the thrill of the murder, however, the plot built around the murder is so precise, like the work of a doctor or a detective, fueled by the character of crafty Tapas, we feel the novel gently forming the curve of resolution that the best mystery tales make, with sufficient thrills until the very end. The Notary is a story built on the foundation of love, obsession, betrayal and brutality.

Translation seems to be preserving the lingual idiosyncrasy of both the author and the period. And the frankness of the author visible in these two openings:  ‘Having followed Rodini up to now, I must talk again of the most charming character in my drama, Angeliki’  ‘In the evening of the day on which this story began, we saw…’ makes us believe that, he wants us to enjoy the story, which we do. Leaving aside the prejudice for the modern dramatic plots, The Notary is one such enjoyable gripping tale brought back from the vault which also leaves us with some historical insight on the formation and integrity of Modern day Greece.

Author: Alexandros Rangavis

Translator: Simon Darragh

Publisher: Aiora Press

Author's Photo Credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandros_Rizos_Rangavis

Review Copy Courtesy: Aiora Press

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Z
by Vassilis Vassilikos
Translated by Marilyn Calmann