Best Comic Award & Best Writer Award by The Greek Comics Awards 2018
Gra-Grou is a really exceptional book : it became the first graphic novel to be shortlisted for the Best Novel Prize of the Literary Magazine Anagnostis.
The restaurant GRA-GROU, in Kastania village on Mount Vermio, marks the passage from central to western Macedoniα.
Many travellers go by, however, only a few notice an arched stone bridge on the side of the road. No one knows where the bridge leads to. Those who see it, do so for a reason.
A girl arrives in Kastania one morning, with her mind set on crossing the bridge. However as she visits GRA-GROU she becomes skeptical. She starts working there, and gets to know the few habitants and regulars, listens to their stories, and observes the travelers that come and go. The months go by, and in the meanwhile, the new road that will bypass Kastania is being built. The heroine must make her decision.
The graphic novel by Tassos Zafeiriadis, Yannis Palavos and Thanassis Petrou unfolds an atmospheric story where tradition intersects with the present moment, and the realistic narrative is undermined by elements of the imaginary.
GRA-GROU, a reference point in northern Greece for an entire era, becomes the perfect setting to reveal an amazing set of characters at a crucial point in their life where they have to decide between a “big yes” or a “big no”.
Ikaros, 2017, 96p. • 21 x 29 cm
Giannis Palavos is a short story writer and translator, born in 1980. He is the author of two short story collections. Asteio (Joke, 2012) won the State Literary Award for Best Short Story Collection and was awarded Best Short Story Collection of the year by the Anagnostis Literary Review. Palavos also co-wrote two graphic novels, To ptoma (The Corpse, 2011) and Gra-Grou (2017).
Thanassis Petrou was born in Thessaloniki in 1971. He studied French Literature and has a Master in Sociolinguistics. In 2002 he won the first national comic prize of “9” magazine. Since 2012 he is teaching Sketch-Comics-Cartoon.
Tasos Zafeiriadis was born in 1981 in Thessaloniki, Greece. He is an orthodontist. He has been a regular author of comics since 2002, publishing many comic strips in Greek magazines and websites. He has published several albums and fanzines, alone or in collaboration.
