Shortlisted for the national Book Prize

In this novel I am looking to discover who my “known-unknown” parents actually were. What had shaped Emmanuel and Katerina before their marriage, my meeting them, before my violent dispute with them, before our later reconciliation? From where did they draw that heavy load of culture, their attitudes and assumptions and even their historical perspectives, which I automatically inherited?  It’s a permissible, if not necessary search, for a maturing child, a writer—as I am now. Strangely, only now did the remnants of my dead parents release their confessions, only now did their old photographs answer my questions. I remembered the family oral history more easily. I found myself in the places where they had lived at difficult times: historic villages in Crete, pre-war Vienna and Bordeaux, Athens, Heraklion and many others: milestones of places, since the family has always been the explosive center of every drama in life and art.

In these fairy tales, which are not fairy tales, I question, invent, understand, scorn, and probably forgive… After all, our parents are only one of the many mirrors in our self-awareness, perhaps the toughest but also the most tender mirror.

Kastaniotis, 2022, 416 P.