iris literary agency

Assonitis Alexandros

Assonitis Alexandros

Alexandros Assonitis was born in 1959 in Athens. He studied law. Since 1990, after numerous odd jobs, he has been pursuing a career as a writer. He has translated ancient Greek authors and has written a series of books about Greek philosophy for children. He also writes literature and musical reviews. Conscience of Eternity is his first novel. The critics deem it an important philosophical novel, a rare type for Modern Greek literature. He is working at the American College of Athens on Creative Writing courses.

Video

Five chapters and twenty-five rhapsodies comprise the five parts of the novel entitled “Speaking Water”, the writing of which lasted seven years. Its subject: whether the imposition of Christianity has been accepted by the peoples it was imposed on or whether there are people who actually believe that the world is the creation of Love, and who propose the re-establishment of the “blissful, free polytheistic community” as the answer to the adulteration of man as well as the answer to the problems of the world and the planet itself. The hero is a Greek tycoon Paul Kiroularios, from the ship-owners’ island, Chios, born in London, where he lives and manages his business.

The four most popular presenters on Greek television are kidnapped by a previously unheard-of terrorist organization, whose members incarcerate them in a basement fitted out as a television studio. They tie them back to back, fill the space with monitors and video walls and record them 24/7, broadcasting everything that happens inside on a closed circuit, and playing all the kidnappees’ old programmes —every last one of them— on the monitors.

Takis Stavropoulos is a forty-year-old lawyer in Athens in the 1990s. He is married to Iris, the only daughter of a politician he detests. Recognising that it may be the pinnacle of his career, he does his best in the case against Montezannes, who is accused of killing his wife and their two young children.