PATAKIS PUBLISHERS
PATAKIS PUBLISHERS
RIGHTS LIST ADULT FICTION LONDON 2011
PATAKIS PUBLISHERS FOREIGN RIGHTS RIGHTS MANAGER ANNA PATAKI anna@patakis.gr FOREIGN RIGHTS GEORGE PANTSIOS foreignrights@patakis.gr
TEL. 0030 210 3650051 FAX 0030 210 3650059 ADDRESS: 38, PAN. TSALDARI STR. (formerly Pireos), 104 37 ATHENS, GREECE
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Isidoros Zourgos The Way We Are The Way We Are is a novel about male friendship and about getting away from it all. A group of childhood friends in their mid-forties sail away in the beginning of a summer, leaving their lives and families behind. Through the adventures of this voyage and the narrator's fluid memory emerge the characters of these five men against the turmoil of the last thirty years in Greece. The Way We Are is a modern Odyssey of those men who attempt an escape from male despair, by breaking away from a stifling everyday life to quench their thirst for timeless youth and beauty. March 2011 Isidoros Zourgos (born in 1964), whose In the Shade of the Butterfly has sold over 60.000 copies in Greece (2005), is one of the most successful and praised contemporary Greek writers.
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Maira Papathanassopoulou JUDAS’ WONDERFUL KISS A novel «For me, «Hotel California» was the most sensual song written in the last thirty years. For him, it was a group’s bad attempt to convey satanic messages to unsuspecting listeners through an enticing melody. Before falling asleep, I’d visualize events that intensely affected me. He, on the other hand, would be snoring within seconds. On excursions, I’d collect large stones and paint them with bright colors. He would use them as door stoppers whenever there was a draft. On Valentine’s Day, I’d flirt with chocolate in store windows. He’d prefer getting his cholesterol from two kilos of lamb chops. Our relationship was characterized by antitheses from the beginning. I fell in love with him at first sight but he didn’t look at me twice. On our next encounter I got lucky though. We started dating; to be exact «we started going steady». I was a firm believer in «safe-sex». He was revolted by the sight of condoms. For him, it was like eating chocolate with the wrapper. I got pregnant at eighteen. He, at twenty-three, was really startled. I decided to keep the baby. Of course, he didn’t agree with that. His parents made him change his mind after finding out about my inheritance. We were bonded by holy matrimony seventeen years ago. For me, the bond was truly holy. For him, it felt just like a real bond. Every time we argued, he would say «I should have had it chopped off». Some wishes never come true...» First published in 1998, more than 300.000 copies sold so far, 312 pages. French rights sold to Plon Italian rights sold to RCS Libri Dutch rights sold to Prometheus/Bakker Spanish rights sold to Destino Portuguese rights sold to Dom Quixote Swedish rights sold to Forum Finnish rights sold to WSOY Polish rights sold to Bertelsmann/Warsaw Hebrew rights sold to Carmel Turkish rights sold to Güncel German rights sold to Heyne Czech rights sold to BBArt Russian rights sold to Slovo Albanian rights sold to Toena Maira Papathanassopoulou was born in Athens in 1967. She studied German Literature and works as a translator. Her first book, the novel Judas’ Wonderful Kiss (1998), climbed immediately to the top of the bestsellers list and has sold more than 300.000 copies. She has published three more novels, Three Men and One Woman (2000), Sweet, Sweet Power (2004) & Blessed are those who mourn (2006). She has also written two children’s picture books, The Spell of Smell (2001) and Don't Cry Wolf (2003).
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Dimitris Bourandas Life is a Stage By the bestselling author of An almost flawless education (2008, more than 180.000 copies sold so far) comes a book about how the harsh and dangerous situations we are experiencing in the modern western societies define our personal lives and how urgent is the demand from each one of us to exercise our “political intelligence� and make the right choices, both for ourselves and for our children. The book presents in a simple and comprehensible way elements from the social sciences that can be useful to the theatre of our lives, as well as personal accounts, metaphors, tales and paradigms. November 2010 Dimitris Bourandas is considered the most distinguished professor of Management and Leadership in Greece while his expertise is internationally recognized. He has founded and directs two highly successful postgraduate programs for corporate executives at the Athens School of Economics (Executive MBA and Human Resources Management) from which a considerable number of top executives have graduated. He has contributed to prestigious scientific periodicals. He has published five books in Greece, one of which is taught in high school.
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Maro Douka Justice is a Tough Cookie A novel A female student cuts short her studies in Athens and returns to her family in Chania, Crete. Accidentally, she discovers one of her grandfather's documents and delves deeper and deeper into his life and the recent history of the city. Why and how did the Germans remain in Chania till June 1945? Why did the Germans, under British orders, enforce law and order during May and June 1945 after the official surrender of Germany? This is a book about history and its narration, about the events and how they affect our everyday life, about the individual and one's place in the world; about the dialectics of simple and complex facts, individualism and collectivity, public and private life, justice and injustice, yesterday and today. The novel Justice is a Tough Cookie, although complete, could be considered the second part of a trilogy in progress with the general title In the Line of Myth and History, its first part being The Innocent and the Guilty. October 2010 • Format 14x21 • 576 pages • ISBN 978-960-16-3789-1 More than 15.000 copies sold in less than 2 months! Maro Douka was born in 1947 in Chania, Crete. She has been living in Athens since 1966. Her first book, containing the novellas «The Well» and «Some people», was published in 1974 (Kedros Publishers), followed by another novella, a collection of short stories and seven novels. She was awarded the Nikos Kazantzakis Prize for her novel «Fool's Gold», was given a National Book Award for the novel «The Floating City», and the Costas Ouranis Prose Fiction Award by the Academy of Athens as well as the 2006 Balkanika Award for her novel «The Innocent and the Guilty». Her short stories and novels have been translated into many European languages.
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Ersi Sotiropoulos The Practical Joke A novel This is a beloved novel published for the first time in 1982 and relaunched now. “The Practical Joke is the manifesto of a rebel woman in a man's world, since the man is still holding the reins, still dominating on heaven and earth...The revolutionary act undermines his power, making a fool of him, knocking him down with laughter,” writes the Greek poet Nanos Valaoritis. And the writer and journalist Evgenios Aranitsis adds: “They say that to write a novel you need an obsession. It's true; you need an idea, any idea... Nabokov, for instance, chose the nymphet and Norman Mailer the foolish ways of the middle classes. Every good novel cultivates the obsession until it shines, it acquires internal legitimation and coherence. This is the wonder of “The Practical Joke”: the obsession here is language itself, naïve and dying yet capable of ingenious plots, of laughing at loneliness and of captivating people's eccentricities in a relentless, conspirational whisper”. November 2010 Ersi Sotiropoulos (novelist, fiction writer, poet) won the National Literature Prize and the Book Critics' Award for her novel, «Zigzag Through the Bitter-Orange Trees». She studied Philosophy and Cultural Anthropology in Florence and was a cultural attaché in the Greek Embassy in Rome. She has participated in several exhibitions of Visual and Concrete Poetry as well as in literature festivals around the world. She has written scripts for film and television. Her work has been translated into French, Spanish, German, Swedish and English. She has been a fellow at the University of Iowa's International Writing Program, at Schloss Wiepersdorf in Germany, at Princeton University, at Sacatar Foundation in Brazil, and elsewhere. She lives in Athens.
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Theodoros Grigoriadis The Wrestler and the Dervish A novel A geographical line unites Dionysis, the lonely dervish of Athens, with the Turkish wrestler of Andrianoupolis, the neighbourhoods of Istanbul with the palaestrae of the frontiers. A young, female photographer is the first to fall madly in love with the wrestler when she sees him fight on the rings of the Macedonian funfairs; but she is not the only one. At the threshold of 21st century married men are still disappearing in their quest for mysticism, while Christos, a professor of Balkan studies, using history as a tool, is trying to get over sexual and racial identities through the interpretation of secret yearnings and historical messages. A bold novel of sexual obsession, a complex and enigmatic canvas with elements of social thriller with a large and contradictory geographical range from the East to the West with no exoticism whatsoever. The Wrestler and the Dervish is a novel about the paradox and the different, the fight of the body and the soul and of love with restlessness. October 2010 Theodoros Grigoriadis was born in Kavala, Northern Greece, in 1956. He studied English Literature at the University of Thessaloniki. He has published seven novels, «Hidden People» 1990, 2002, «The Sailor» 1993, «The Dancer in the Oliveyard» 1996, «The Waters of Hersonisos» 1998, «Partali: The Story of a Man who Dressed as a Woman» 2001 (published in French by Editions Alteredit), «Outside the Body» 2003, «Alouza: A Thousand and One Lovers» 2005, a novella «Second Birth» and two collections of short stories, «The Ancient Phallus» 1991, 1995 & «Maps» 2007.
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Polychronis Koutsakis Athens Blues A novel Stratos Gazis is an incorruptible “carer” in love. He doesn't like being called “hitman”. He takes care of things said in whisper; things said like well-paid orders. People who say them want them done but don't want to know how they are done. Stratos is their man on one condition: his research must conclude the necessity of murder. He says: “I'm like Robin Hood. I steal from the villains. I steal their lives”. Now, in the melancholy winter that makes life in Athens insufferable, Stratos gets involved with the most beloved public solicitor, well-known for his help to the needy, and his wife, an actress and a model, the most desirable woman in the country. Both want to hire Stratos and he has to discover who tells the truth and whom he has to “take care of”. Fortunately, Stratos is being helped by three childhood friends: Dragg (the chief of the Homicide Squad in Athens), Maria (with whom they are both in love) and Terry (a call-girl with a golden heart and a terrible punch). But as Stratos is delving deeper and deeper into the case, he finds out that truth between estranged lovers and families with lots of skeletons in their closets, is quite relative and quite ambiguous. November 2010 Polychronis Koutsakis was born in 1974 in Chania, Crete. He has written several plays, which have been staged in various drama festivals in England and won a number of awards. He has also published four novels and a poetry collection. Athens Blues is his fifth novel.
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Thanassis Chimonas I Used to Love Her, It's All Over Now A novella Are eight years enough for you to know that a person has existed? Nicole was her name. Around her a universe of expectations, passions and quests -three persons moving all around, as if nothing else exists. A modern Medea who devours her surroundings leaving no trace. A novel about the inexorable passion of lying, in a version of Athens which is still undiscovered, in places that may exist or not exist. Everything seems eerie and doubtful, yet so true. True as the passionate words and the erotic images. And then the wide, wild sea that always knows how to embrace you, even when she struggles to drown you. November 2010 Thanassis Chimonas was born in 1971 in Athens. He studied Literature and Film at the University of Strasbourg and Journalism in London. He has written five previous novels, «Ramon» (Kedros, 1998), «Broken Greek» (Kedros, 2000), «Inscrutable Soul» (Patakis, 2003), «L’Heure Bleue» (Patakis, 2005) & «Rapid Fall» (Patakis, 2008). «Ramon» was published in French by Editions Alteredit in 2002, followed by «Broken Greek» in 2003.
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Agathi Dimitrouka
 Selling Life, Billing Death A memoir
Barbarism and humanity, poverty and splendour, heroism and dreams define the fate of a young girl in a village in Central Greece. When she becomes a teenager, she manages to flee the stifling Greek province of the sixties and seventies and find a niche in Athens, next to the poet Nikos Gatsos and amongst the personages of the intellectual and cultural life. The author, 52 years old today, is trying to recompose her identity in a poetically realistic way, self-searching without drama or scandal-mongering; the text is written breathlessly and read breathlessly. The prose is enriched with verses of songs, theatrical monologues and dialogues of real people. November 2010
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Dimitris Bourandas An Almost Flawless Education A novel Professor Nikos Alexiou tried to figure out if he was having a nightmare or if this was raw reality. Suddenly, he had the feeling that part of himself was collapsing; the pride he felt at the thought he would leave Anna behind him as his legacy turned into anxiety, even guilt. His mind and soul searched for a way out: he had to look into Anna.s life, into every moment of it, and into his own responsibility. He could save his soul only through repentance. He had to ask her forgiveness for what he had or hadn’t done that had brought her here; he had to find out what he’d forgotten to teach her. And if he could, he would teach her now. Before it was too late. “If we had two lives I would never think of writing this novel. It would be of no use either to you or to me. We would live our first life as a rehearsal, as a trial run, so as to know how to live the second one better. If we died twice, we would most certainly die better the second time around. Unfortunately, things are not so. We have one life and it's short. There are no second chances, no second acts. No rehearsals, no trial runs. That's why we must do our best now- for ourselves and for our loved ones.” April 2008 • Format 14x21 • 376 pages • ISBN 978-960-16-2779-3
More than 180.000 copies sold so far “National Book Center Readers” Award 2008 Dimitris Bourandas is considered the most distinguished professor of Management and Leadership in Greece while his expertise is internationally recognized. He has founded and directs two highly successful postgraduate programs for corporate executives at the Athens School of Economics (Executive MBA and Human Resources Management) from which a considerable number of top executives have graduated. He has contributed to prestigious scientific periodicals. He has published five books in Greece, one of which is taught in high school.
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Dimitris Stefanakis ALEXANDRIAN DAYS A novel Greek tobacco manufacturer Anthony Haramis lives with his wife Daphne and their two children in Alexandria's aristocratic district, the Quartier Grec, trapped inside the strict social confines of the Greek community. His business dealings with a mysterious Lebanese man, Elias Huri, will give him the opportunity to sign an exclusive contract with the British army in the Middle East on the day when World War I breaks out, but will also especially free him from the moral stranglehold of family life: Huri's mediation will lead to a budding love affair between him and the exquisite Swiss-French Yvette Chanton. A story spanning fifty years, where war and trade, politics and love, colonisation and nationalism clash with unexpected consequences. The Nasserist purges are simply the culmination of the agonizing exodus of the Egyptian Greeks and other foreigners from the once hospitable country of the Nile. November 2007 • Format 14x21 • 656 pages • ISBN 978-960-16-2665-9
More than 20.000 copies sold so far French rights sold to Viviane Hamy (Published in January 2011) Arabic rights sold to NCT (National Center for Translation) Dimitris Stefanakis was born on the island of Kea (Cyclades) in 1961. He went to Law School in Athens. He has translated Saul Bellow, John Updike, Margaret Atwood, E.M. Forster, Joseph Brodsky, Prospère Mérimée. He has written six novels: “Seasonal Fruit” (Oceanida, 2000), “Call me Kaira” (Oceanida, 2002), “The revolution is colour-blind” (Oceanida, 2004), “Alexandrian Days” (Patakis Publishers, 2007), “Spelling the Summer” (Patakis Publishers, 2009) & “You Shall Fight with the Gods” (Patakis Publishers, 2010).
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SELECTED BACKLIST TITLES Maro Douka FOOL’S GOLD A novel New, revised edition My father, thunderstruck, was demanding to know: “But when? This is madness! Impossible.” When at last he replaces the receiver in a grand Shakespearean manner – my father has it in the blood – he broke the news to us: Dictatorship. My mother cried out and collapsed in a heap on the sofa. Calliope the maid, as part of her duties, always manages to sense the right moment for a restorative coffee, and set off for the kitchen. My father repeated: “Dictatorship, do you hear!” I stared at him, shaking off sleep. This is how Myrsini Panayotou, an Athenian girl about to start university, learns of the coup d’etat that brought to power the infamous dictatorship of the “Colonels” in her country in the early hours of Friday, 21st April 1967. The child of a well-to-do family, Myrsini enthusiastically joins the underground resistance, making common cause with a varied cast of characters from backgrounds very different from her own. After an early failed love affair, she gets engaged to George, a political prisoner, only to find her human instincts increasingly difficult to reconcile with her idealistic philosophy once he is released. The story moves towards its climax as Myrsini becomes involved in the bloody events of 17th November 1973, when tanks were used to evict students from the Athens Polytechnic. At the same time the fortunes of Myrsini’s family form a backdrop at once touching and bizarre to an impressionable girl’s unflinching search for a true identity, both for herself and for her country. Fool’s Gold is a sparkling novel by a talented writer, one of the foremost of a generation which grew up in the shadow of the events Maro Douka describes. July 2008 • Format 14x21 • 352 pages • ISBN 978-960-16-2989-6
Previously published in English by Kedros Modern Greek Writers Series under the title Fool’s Gold (translated by Roderick Beaton) and in French by Actes Sud under the title L’or des fous (translated by Paule Rossetto). Maro Douka was born in 1947 in Chania, Crete. She has been living in Athens since 1966. Her first book, containing the novellas “The Well” and “Some people”, was published in 1974 (Kedros Publishers), followed by another novella, a collection of short stories and seven novels. She was awarded the Nikos Kazantzakis Prize for her novel “Fool’s Gold”, was given a National Book Award for the novel “The Floating City”, and the Costas Ouranis Prose Fiction Award by the Academy of Athens as well as the 2006 Balkanika Award for her novel “The Innocent and the Guilty”. Her short stories and novels have been translated into many European languages.
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Christos Chomenidis Flying Words A novel Just before dying, Tinellos, a famous gleeman of the VIII century b.C. narrates his life to his grandson: his childhood at the Ionian coast, his joining the disciples of the elder vocalist Anavates, his passing through Mycenae and the Olympic Games, his romantic adventures, journeys and transformations; the pleasures he knew, the passions and catastrophes he - inadvertently - caused... Dramatic and facetious, greedy and dreamy, Tinellos -Homer's grandson- is a hero who can be seen as an ancestor to both Don Quichote and Gargantua. «Flying Words» is a novel that at times reminds a psychedelic comic, at times a musical of the remote antiquity. Revisiting the era when myths were still in the making, Christos Chomenidis writes allegorically on the sublime power of narration. The world makes sense and gets a form only when we tell its story. Even when Tinellos ends up just a voice crying in the wilderness, he only needs one narratee so as to rebuild it all from scratch. June 2009 • Format 14x21 • 376 pages • ISBN 978-960-16-3322-0
More than 20.000 copies sold so far Christos Chomenidis was born in Athens in 1966. He studied Law. In 1993 he published his first novel «The Wise Child» which launched his career as a professional writer. His subsequent four novels and lots of his short stories were translated in various languages (French, English, Lithuanian, Polish). His novel, «The House and the Cell», published by Patakis Publishers in 2005, has been a huge commercial success and turkish rights have been sold. Chomenidis has also written the script for a movie and a TV series.
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Nikos Kokantzis GIOCONDA A true story
Gioconda was first published in 1975 and since then has never ceased to be reprinted, while it has also been translated into many foreign languages to critical acclaim. It is the true story of the first love between two young people from Salonica during the German Occupation. Their love is violently interrupted when Gioconda and her family, like so many other Jews of the city, are put on that road of no return, leading to the concentration camps. Hebrew, Catalan and Dutch rights sold. Previously published in French, German, English & Italian. First edition by Patakis March 2005, Format 14x21 • 136 pages • ISBN 960-16-1251-3.
“Kokantzis’ elegy is laconic and lyrical, eloquent and sad-like his story” World Literature Today “Son récit, proche du conte, bascule de la découverte innocente des émerveillements de la chair (une sorte de cantique des cantiques pour l’éveil du désir, le rituel des caresses) à la prise de conscience que leurs rencontres et étreintes sont des actes de résistance, puis à l’embarquement de Gioconda et des siens vers les chambres à gaz. Kokantzis n’a eu la force d’écrire ce livre que trente ans plus tard. Il vibre encore.” Le Monde Nikos Kokantzis (1927-2009) was born in Thessaloniki, Northern Greece. He studied Medicine in Thessaloniki University and was specialized in Psychiatry (and then Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy) in London, where he lived for many years. Gioconda was published in 1975 becoming a classic overnight and was reissued by Patakis Publishers in March 2005, together with the publication of Nine Stories and a Libretto and a selection of his poetry under the title Quartet.
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Soti Triantafillou THE PENCIL FACTORY A novel
“The Pencil Factory” is a novel of ideas that covers eighty years of European history, beginning in Cairo in the 1860s and ending in Athens on the eve of World War II. Stefanos Assimakis is an engineer at Suez and his son Markos goes to Djibouti to work for the railway. But before this, in Zurich, he meets the revolutionary Nicos Vangalis who smokes sixty cigarettes a day and drinks sixty cups of black coffee. “The Pencil Factory” is the story of this great friendship, as well as the story of a girl, named Luselle, who loved parties and Paris nights; and of another girl who hanged herself on a tree; it is also the chronicle of social dreamers in turbulent times, a novel about being madly in love and about being mad, about bloody crimes and a bloodless one that happened in a Congo villa in the early 1930s. “The Pencil Factory” is a novel about the people who travelled to the depths of Africa, who met Lenin in Geneva, Rosa Luxemburg in Berlin, Trotsky in Saint Petersburg. And who, in spite of betrayal, illness and loss, led wonderful lives. First edition February 2000, 400 pages. 25 reprints. New revised edition July 2005, 4th reprint May 2008. Over 100.000 copies sold so far. Published in German by Zsolnay and in French by Alteredit. Also Turkish and Catalan rights sold. Soti Triantafillou was born in Athens, Greece, in 1957. She got a Ph.D. on American History and Civilization from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and NYU in New York. She has published three collections of short stories, two books on film, eight novels, Saturday Night on the Edge of the Town 1996 (new edition: Patakis Publishers, 2008), Tomorrow, Another Country 1997 (new edition: Patakis Publishers, 2009), The Subterranean Sky 1998 (published in German by Zsolnay, new edition: Patakis Publishers, 2009), The Pencil Factory 2000 (German, French, Catalan & Turkish rights sold), Poor Margo 2001 (originally written in English), Century 2003, Chinese Boxes 2006 (German & Italian rights sold) & Some of your blood 2008, the novellas The Flight (Melani, 2004) & Forgiveness 2005, a memoir Time again 2009, a children’s book, Marion on the Silver Islands and in the Red Forests 1999, and a young adults book, African Diary 2008.
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Soti Triantafillou CHINESE BOXES A novel «The Chinese Boxes» is a story set in the narrow streets of Chinatown in New York; seasons of the year and strange events happen and fade away in the stifling heat and under the heavy rain; neon signs blink over cheesy windows; a killer is on the loose. The mysteries are never revealed, the story seems like a set of Chinese boxes: when you open one, you find another sealed inside. Seven murders take place; the lives of the victims remain ambiguous, everyone has something to hide and hides it well. A man learns how to walk; a girl drives crosscountry in search of something, finding something else: a kind of loving and a New York death. Apart from the central character, private eye Stuart Malone, there is an eccentric old aunt living in the wilds of Brooklyn amidst preposterous objects and ancient manuscripts and a weary lieutenant who waits impatiently for his retirement day, which is still three years away. Some of the events happen out a window overlooking Chinatown, others out another window over the Meatpacking district, and a few more out a third one in the rundown neighbourhood of Red Hook. It's the end of 1989, the beginning of 1990: a dangerous year. «The Chinese Boxes» is a story about a fortune cookie factory and the New York subway which, rumor has it, is haunted by vampires. Soti Triantafillou's novel is woven around Stuart Malone, a man chasing a lost dream. It is also a wandering through a city that is, above all, a state of mind. October 2006, 7th reprint August 2007, over 30.000 copies sold so far. Published in German (2009) by Suhrkamp Verlag. Also, Italian rights sold.
FORGIVENESS Novella
“Forgiveness” is a story about random violence; mainly it’s a story about human kindness. If history goes on because of the criminal in us - and in spite of it - kindness is timeless. In “Forgiveness” three heinous crimes are committed; a child goes missing, a family falls apart, the fragile harmony of things turns into a nightmare. A nightmare of hatred, despair and revenge. All is loneliness and nothing is quite as it seems. The murderer is punished as harshly as it takes; however, his conviction and death don’t bring redemption, not even relief. Death is permanent: the dead never come back. The heroine of this book - Antonia Cooper from Nashville, Tennessee loses her faith, though she doesn’t really know in whom or which. Through a painful journey of feelings, she realizes that forgiveness is the only way to survive, even live. The book is not a comment on religious faith: it’s about being good just for the sake of goodness, it’s about the sovereignty of good. First edition March 2005 / 6th reprint, January 2006, 128 pages. English draft translation available.
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Soti Triantafillou TOMORROW, ANOTHER COUNTRY A novel New edition Tomorrow, Another Country, is Soti Triantafillou’s second novel, a story on an Athenian childhood in the sixties, a time of games, broken dreams and lost loves and a few other scary things, narrated (slightly distorted and sometimes concealed) by the members of a middle-class family who live in downtown Athens, a major city in the making. It is a dusty city, not because of the hot weather, rather because of the construction sites. Athens in the sixties goes wild, dancing the twist and the bossanova, and drinking exotic cocktails at the seaside hangouts. Everything seems easy but it isn’t, everything seems innocent and funny but it isn’t. Tomorrow, Another Country is a story of betrayal, illusion and regrets; it is also a chronicle of Athens in the sixties, in a short moment of time before the military coup in 1967; then, it is also a chronicle of this uncertain southern republic and of the collective dreams that fell apart ruining people’s lives. Through the events and the characters of the novel, two countries unfold: one that exists no more – Greece in the sixties ― and this other country, our childhood, our memory. May 2009 • Format 14x21 • 200 pages • ISBN 978-960-16-3240-7.
French draft translation available.
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Theodoros Grigoriadis Partali: The Story of a Man who Dressed as a Woman Α novel Thessaloniki, the big city of Northern Greece. The port, the castle, the University. An enigmatically fascinating creature in old-fashioned garments wanders in the streets of a remote part of the city. Who is he, what is he after, where does he come from, what’s his past? Nobody has a clue, everybody wants to know. City University. Manouil and Mike, students in Literature, are quite intrigued; they invade his life taking a few chances and they interpret his adventure in their own way, there are even some instances where they pretend to be him. However, it’s «Partali» (The Rag) who invades other people’s lives, conquering them, casting his spell on them. The trap has been set... Nothing is what it seems. The story takes place somewhere between the University and the harbor, at the Vardaris, a neighbourhood at the edge of Thessaloniki. Through successive narrations, a historical scenery from the German occupation to the fall of the military dictatorship is created, while the author gives us a rough idea of what a «restless» post-dictatorship generation would bring about. Sarcastic, tragicomic, daring even foul-mouthed, this novel adopts various narrative forms and is open to multiple interpretations. 2001 • Format 14x21 • 472 pages • ISBN 960-378-966-6
Published in French by Alteredit under the title “La Loque”. Theodoros Grigoriadis was born in Kavala, Northern Greece, in 1956. He studied English Literature at the University of Thessaloniki. He has published eight novels, «Hidden People» 1990, 2002, «The Sailor» 1993, «The Dancer in the Oliveyard» 1996, «The Waters of Hersonisos» 1998, «Partali: The Story of a Man who Dressed as a Woman» 2001, «Outside the body» 2003, «Alouza: A Thousand and One Lovers» 2005, «The Wrestler & the Dervish» 2010, a novella «Second Birth» 2009 and two collections of short stories, «The Ancient Phallus» 1991, 1995 & «Maps» 2007.
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Philippos Phillippou THE LAST DAYS OF CONSTANTINE CAVAFY A novel In April 1933, Philippo Tommazo Marinetti, the leader of the Italian Futurists, whose progressive ideas concerning literature, theater, film, photography, music, sculpture, architecture, but also fashion and cooking, influenced all the intellectual and artistic movements of 20th century Europe, paid a visit to C.P. Cavafy, at the latter’s home in Alexandria. A poet, novelist, playwright, actor and head of a theater company, Marinetti, who was also born in Alexandria, felt an affinity for the great Alexandrian—the affinity of kindred spirits—with whom he had an interesting discussion about literature, politics and other matters. The discussion is carried out in a novel way: the visitor speaks, while the poet, who has lost the ability of speech, poses questions or gives answers through written notes. When Cavafy’s health takes a turn for the worst and he is admitted to the hospital, Marinetti becomes a regular visitor of his ward, where he meets some of the poet’s friends, among them: Nikos Kazantzakis, Stratis Tsirkas, E.M. Forster, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Marika Kotopouli, Kyveli and Penelope Delta. Besides participating in interesting chats with the above and being an eyewitness to Cavafy’s behavior during the last days of his life, which ended on April 29, the day of his birthday, Marinetti instigates various happenings in honor of the poet. The Last Days of Constantine Cavafy is a biographical novel; a mixture of documented facts and fiction. Affectionately, empathetically, but not without “Cavafic irony”, Philippos Philippou describes the natural deterioration and gradual progression towards death of the most popular Greek poet of the 20th century, who is also one of the most important poets worldwide; a poet of future generations. First edition March 2003, 3rd reprint, May 2003, 272 pages. Published in Catalan by Pages Editors & in Romanian by Omonia.
Philippos Philippou was born on the island of Corfu in December 1948. His publications include witness accounts, essays, biographies and novels. Two of his books deal with life at sea: the novella The Lovers of the Sea or The Book of the Unknown Sailor and the essay The Political Aspect of Nikos Kavvadias. His novels New York, Summer and Loneliness (2005), Zorba’s Death (2007) & The man that women loved (2009) have also been published by Patakis Publishers.
PATAKIS PUBLISHERS
Michel Fais AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A BOOK A novel "«Autobiography of a Book» is a brilliant reconstruction (or perhaps deconstruction) of the life and history of the town of Komotini... This remarkable novel succeeds where many historical works do not in setting the Jewish experience in Northern Greece in a broader and vividly imagined social and ethnic content..." Mark Mazower "Fais' Autobiography of a Book reminds us that in the course of a few weeks in 1943 Germans led the Jewish population in Thrace en masse to its destruction, while Muslim women clattered tin and copper ustensils to fend off the Bulgarian occupation..." Artemis Leondis, Prof. of Modern Greek Literature, University of Michigan "..a clear and sombre introspection reminiscent of Thomas Bernhard's prose.." Marie-Stephane Devaud, Newspaper Tageblatt, 20-6-1997 "...set in Komotini in Thrace, a region characterized historically by its heterogeneity and fought over in the 20th century by the Ottoman Empire, Greece and Bulgaria...the novel juxtaposes purported testimonies with newspaper articles and contains alternative versions of events from which the reader may choose, thereby undermining the absolute divisions of testimony and fiction and giving rise to perspectival shifts..." Robert Shannan Peckham, Scholar of Modern Greek Studies, London Magazine, 45/1991 Revised edition by Patakis Publishers October 2005, 344 pages.
Previously published in French by Editions Hatier (1996) under the title Autobiographie d' un livre (translated by Françoise Arvanitis). Published in Romanian by Omonia (2007). Michel Fais was born in Komotini, Thrace in 1957. He studied Economics at the University of Athens. His novel «The Autobiography of a Book» (1994) was translated into French (Hatier, 1996) and Romanian (Omonia, 2007). His collection of short stories «From the Same Glass and Other Stories» (1999) received the State Short Story Award in 2000. His story «Aegypius Monachus» (2001) completed an informal trilogy. His short stories have been translated, for magazines and anthologies, into English, German, Czech and Bulgarian. In 1996 he published «The Retrospective Gaze» (Patakis), where 44 writers and artists commented on photographs of tombs. He collaborated with Theo Angelopoulos on the screenplay of his latest film trilogy. His work on the painter Giulio Caimi is contained in «Greek Landscapes» (1993), «Giulio Caimi, a Man Suppressed. Recollections and Criticism. Selected Articles (1928-1976). Paintings» (1994), «Santaga or the Six Rules of Painting», «Rodakis’ House on Aegina», «The Ill-fated Marriage» (1997). He is also the central character of his novel «The Honey and Ashes of God» (Patakis, 2002). His latest novel, Purple Laughter, was published by Patakis in October 2010.