This weblog contains samples of my work. In the last twenty years or so I have dealt with most forms of writing – novels, short stories, theater, non-fiction, scripts, essays and translation. Some of the work deals with my family and quite a bit of has to do with Greece. I like to think that my three novels and my short stories draw attention to the acts of an average person who finds himself in unusual circumstances. I write in both languages and have not yet succeeded in translating all my works into either Greek or English.
In the fall of 1960 Columbia Recordings of Greece released Epitaphios (Epitaph), composed and conducted by Mikis Theodorakis, based on a poem written by Greece’s “communist” poet Yannis Ritsos. Mikis Theodorakis had not yet achieved the international acclaim that his scoring of the films “Zorba the Greek,” “Z,” “The Ballad of Mauthausen,” and Neruda’s “Canto General” would bring him a few years later, but this piece earned him instant fame within Greece, for it exploded... (more...)
Essay for collection entitled THE GENIUS OF LANGUAGE Pantheon Books Version of March, 2003 Growing up bi-lingual meant growing up with two cultures, two opposing identities. The Greek language was, in the first case, the language of politics, meaning the speeches of my father and grandfather. “Greece to the Greeks,” my father cried out in the mid-nineteen-sixties while, in my grandfather’s more apophthegmatic or, in today’s parlance, sound-bite Greek, “The King reigns but... (more...)
Rosa, I have a confession to make. That’s why I’m talking to you, why I’m holding your picture, the one from Henry’s thirteenth birthday party. Today I broke my promise. Today I told Henry. Let me explain. Remember when we first came to see our property in King City? Yes, you’ve heard this part before, but let me tell it again, don’t talk back. You read me the sign on Jane street — you knew some English: Population 1,000, Growing with Canada. “A country... (more...)
And here was great old Piraeus. Ships lined up along the quay like an apartment complex with high rises and low-rises and chimney stacks scattered here and there. Men pushed carts in front of departing ferry boats, in case passengers hungered for sugar cane, almonds, cashews, pistachios, dried apricots. Islanders with overflowing families arrived with dreams stuffed into their overflowing suitcases. Women carried bags with kataifi and baklava to sweeten their sudden appearance at the door... (more...)
Nobody knew much about his past, except that he’d been on the losing side of the civil war. Something of his good looks still remained, but now they were haunted by a pale unhealthy skin, thin sallow cheeks and eyes that glared out from beneath a deep forehead. Those first days after his release from prison, Ramfos slept on a wooden bench in the port of Piraeus, beneath an old palm tree with thick scales of bark. One morning he was so hungry he tore off one of the scales and tried to eat it,... (more...)
A week on Zakynthos The night I arrived on the island of Zakynthos for Easter the Hale-Bopp comet was still visible, racing rapidly away from earth. Just the day before, I was told, great winds had carried sands from Northern Africa to Greece and the particles lent the nightsky an eerie yellow glow. I stayed in the small mountain village of Aghious Pantes (All-Saints) about twenty kilometres inland. My hosts were farmers, an extended family complete with grandparents, parents and four children,... (more...)
Census Day in Greece Sunday, March 18, 2001 Nick Papandreou 1 Today is the decennial census. At my living room table, below the picture of Melina Mercouri, sits the census-taker. He is a young man, tired, sleepy, perhaps uncertain why he and thousands of others took on the task. “Didn’t want to start too early,” he told me when I asked if he would finish his allotment before the sun went down. “Otherwise everybody would throw lemon rinds at us.” I informed him of the facts: born in... (more...)
Mikis and Manos: A Tale of Two Composers. Kerkyra pub, 2007, Greek and English in same book With pictures, 123 pps. This essay looks at the circuitous route of modern Greece through the intense on again off again rivalry between Greece’s two top composers (Mikis Theodorakis of Zorba fame and Manos Hadjidakis of Never on Sunday fame), a rivalry which brought people into the streets.. Read More →
A Crowded Heart (Picador/St. Martin’s, USA 1998) Novel Through the unwavering gaze of a young boy named Alex, Nicholas Papandreou narrates the story of a family uprooted from their home in the United States to live in Greece in pursuit of a father’s political ambitions. The novel is set against a sensuously wrought Greek landscape as Alex and his family move through the dangerous world of Byzantine politics and are swept up in an avalanche of revolution, military dictatorship and ultimately,... (more...)
Father Dancing (Penguin, UK, 1996) same as above, English publishers The style of this enchanting book is both sensuous and sharp – Tom Sawyer goes to Thasos. – Gore Vidal Beautifully understated rites of passage – Christopher Hitchens Read More →