8.500 copies sold in a month

During the very last days of 2008, in the aftermath of December Greek Riots and following a long struggle with depression brought about by my mother’s suicide, I suffered a psychotic break – during which I was utterly convinced I was the new Dalai Lama, and in the course of whose frantic devolution I unwittingly dragged my loved ones and my broken self through a series of tragicomic events, culminating in my forcible if inevitable commitment in a psychiatric hospital.

Here Comes Dalai Lama with His Red Umbrella is an account of those wild, terrifying, and at times even farcically hilarious days, and of the bitter months that followed, during which I struggled with a near-fatal case of clinical depression. And yet this memoir is, above all else, a story of hope springing forth no matter what horrors life throws at you – and of love being able, even in the midst of the soul’s deepest darkness, to save you.

Patakis, 2016, 256 p.