iris literary agency

Galanaki Rhea

Galanaki Rhea

Rhea Galanaki was born in Heraklion, Crete in 1947. She studied History and Archaeology in Athens. She has published novels, short stories, poems and essays. She’s been twice awarded the Greek National Book Award (in 1999 for her novel Eleni, or Nobody and in 2005 for her short- story collection An Almost Blue Hand). She has also received the Athens Academy Award For Prose (in 2003, for her novel The Age of Labyrinths), the Nikos Kazantzakis Award of the Heraklion Municipality in 1987 and the National Book Center of Greece Readers’ Award in 2006 for her fictional biography Silent, Deep Waters. Her novel The Life of Ishmael Ferik Pasha is the first Greek book to have been included in the Unesco Collection of Representative Works (1994), while Eleni, or Nobody was shortlisted for the Aristeion Prize (1999). Her books have been translated into fifteen languagues: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Czech, Bulgarian, Swedish, Lithuanian, Turkish, Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew and Albanian.

A Greek soldier, taken prisoner during the 1866 Greek revolt against the Turks, rises to a high position in the Turkish army. Years later, Ismail Ferik Pasha is sent to Greece to quell a new revolt by his people and comes face to face with his brother. A tale of divided loyalties.

The novel focuses on the night that Athens was torched: Sunday 12 February 2012.

Two women, a former philologist and a former painter, who happen to be roommates in an inner city “guest house”, secretly join the demonstrations.