Shortlist of the Greek State Prize for Translation of a Work of Greek Literature into a Foreign Language 2025

Halepas was a great sculptor with a tragic life as he went into madness. On the occasion of Halepas’ sculpture “Athena shepherdess”, the first novella focuses on the twenty-eight years that Halepas lived in Tinos, after the asylum in Corfu and until he returned to Athens, recognized for the second time. During this time, which the death of his mother divided in two, Halepas also worked as a shepherd. What was the stormy relationship with the mother, how did faces and times cross within him, why was the “outcast sculptor” “deceased” during this time, are some of the mysteries that are touched upon.

Ariadne’s passionate love for the stranger and enemy in Minoan Knossos Theseus is recounted in the second novella by herself. Her story differs from the myth handed down to us by Greek antiquity. Not only because a woman takes the floor, but also because next to the daughter in love, the prestige of a princess, priestess and goddess emerges. As if things had to go their fateful, ritualistic cycle, even in a world that was declining as the new was emerging.

Kastaniotis, 2017, 226 p.