Vivi Holeva works as a live-in nurse taking care of elderly people in need of her caregiver’s skills. She has an only son, Linos, who is ‘straying into the dark and dangerous’. During a leave of absence, the two of them set out on a trip to Delphi. Once there, in the sanctum of Greek antiquity, mother and son will become close, though separated by a chasm of experiences, which for many years had seemed impossible to cross. During the five days of their holiday, their past is slowly unraveled while the reader, through Karystiani’s torrential prose style will gradually discover the meaning of the title’s «sacks»: the moral and mental loads burdening the protagonists and even more importantly those shouldered for years by a huge portion of Greek society, people who, weak and powerless, follow history taking course oblivious to their presence, and life taking place further and further away.

Kastaniotis, 2010, 368 p.