In a fictional Europe, where the concept of citizenship has been replaced by that of professionalism, two friends, an artist and an intellectual, undertake a strange mission: they are appointed escorts for an innocent prisoner facing the death penalty. His trial is conducted in public as they travel to the place of execution, crossing the mountain ranges of the Aegean, the Carpathians, the Alps, and the Pyrenees. They are hosted by castle towns, theater towns, sanatorium towns, monastery towns, library towns, and brothel towns, which constitute the members of the court. All the inhabitants of Europe are jurors, who must decide whether the defendant’s innocence is nothing more than a perverted guilt, or whether the judges’ sound judgment is nothing more than a subtle slander… A book with elements of a street novel, a political thriller, and a Gothic fairy tale. A journey to the edge of meaning with successive twists and turns. A thrilling journey that confronts us with two big questions: how dangerous can the certainties of “well-governed” democracies become, and where does the essence of political innocence or guilt lie?

KASTANIOTIS, 2011, 398 p.