Achilles' Fiancée

Achilles' Fiancée PDF Author: Αλκη Ζεη
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
"The scene is Paris, sometime after the 1967 military coup in Greece. Eleni, together with a group of her friends and fellow political exiles, finds herself working as an extra in a French film: The Horror Train. It is not the first time Eleni has been caught up in a deadly drama, nor is it her first ride on a horror train. As the director waves his arms, shouting directions and re-shooting the sequence, Eleni's mind wanders to her first train ride: "Athens-Piraeus. My first big trip by train." " - You're Eleni? I'm Achilles." "They don't ask which Achilles. One name is enough..."" "For the rest of her life, Eleni will be "Achilles' Fiancee," fiancee of the guerilla leader, the brave, handsome kapetanios whose code-name is Achilles. In the demonstrations against the German occupiers of Greece, in prison where she waits for a death sentence during the post-war persecution of suspected leftists, in exile in Tashkent where the exiled Greek communists fight amongst themselves, and finally in Paris. But somewhere along the way Eleni becomes an independent character with a mind of her own. As she begins to doubt the slogans that she fought for when she was a blind follower of leaders like her fiance, Eleni involves us in her own private world of self-discovery. It is a woman's world, where human warmth and friendships matter more than abstract ideals." "The Greek work for a novel is mythistorema, a word that combines myth and history. In her story of a young woman's struggle to survive through an extraordinary period of Greek history, Alki Zei has woven the threads of her own quasi-mythical life into the stuff of history."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Achilles' Fiancée

Achilles' Fiancée PDF Author: Αλκη Ζεη
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
"The scene is Paris, sometime after the 1967 military coup in Greece. Eleni, together with a group of her friends and fellow political exiles, finds herself working as an extra in a French film: The Horror Train. It is not the first time Eleni has been caught up in a deadly drama, nor is it her first ride on a horror train. As the director waves his arms, shouting directions and re-shooting the sequence, Eleni's mind wanders to her first train ride: "Athens-Piraeus. My first big trip by train." " - You're Eleni? I'm Achilles." "They don't ask which Achilles. One name is enough..."" "For the rest of her life, Eleni will be "Achilles' Fiancee," fiancee of the guerilla leader, the brave, handsome kapetanios whose code-name is Achilles. In the demonstrations against the German occupiers of Greece, in prison where she waits for a death sentence during the post-war persecution of suspected leftists, in exile in Tashkent where the exiled Greek communists fight amongst themselves, and finally in Paris. But somewhere along the way Eleni becomes an independent character with a mind of her own. As she begins to doubt the slogans that she fought for when she was a blind follower of leaders like her fiance, Eleni involves us in her own private world of self-discovery. It is a woman's world, where human warmth and friendships matter more than abstract ideals." "The Greek work for a novel is mythistorema, a word that combines myth and history. In her story of a young woman's struggle to survive through an extraordinary period of Greek history, Alki Zei has woven the threads of her own quasi-mythical life into the stuff of history."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Other Self

The Other Self PDF Author: Dēmētrēs Tziovas
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739106259
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Looking at eight specific novels and at exile narratives as a group, Tziovas (modern Greek studies, U. of Birmingham) traces the transformation of Greek culture from community-based to individual- based, and the impact that change has had on recent Greek fiction. Being postmodern, his readings emphasize relativity and subjectivity, and reject rigid totalities and grand narratives. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

History and National Ideology in Greek Postmodernist Fiction

History and National Ideology in Greek Postmodernist Fiction PDF Author: Gerasimus Katsan
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson
ISBN: 1611475945
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
History and National Ideology in Greek Postmodernist Fiction investigates the ways postmodernist literary techniques have been adopted by Greek authors. Taking into consideration the global impetus of postmodernism, the book examines its local implications. Framed by a discussion of major postmodernist thinkers, the book argues for the ability of local cultures to retain their uniqueness in the face of globalization while at the same time adapting to the new global situation. The combination of external global influences and the specific internal concerns of Greek national literature makes the emergence of postmodernism in Greece distinctive from that of other national contexts. The book engages in larger theoretical debates about the “crisis” of national identity in the context of postmodern globalization and the resurgence of nationalist ideology either as a response to globalization or the exigencies of historical events. This crisis has been brought on in part by the very postmodernist and poststructuralist questioning of the ideologies upon which nation-states construct themselves. The central argument of the book is that postmodernist Greek writers question the idea of national identity based on both the impact of globalization and a reexamination of the discourses of national ideology: they suggest a turn away from the traditional concerns with cultural homogeneity towards an acceptance of multiplicity and diversity, which is reflected through experimentation with postmodernist literary techniques. Consequently, the unifying idea of this book is “national identity” as it is reconfigured in recent contemporary novels. My analysis incorporates the view that metafiction is a “borderline” or “marginal” discourse that exists on the boundary between fiction and criticism. The book illuminates the connections between the formal concerns of contemporary authors and the larger debates and philosophical underpinnings of postmodernism in general.

Who's Who in Contemporary Women's Writing

Who's Who in Contemporary Women's Writing PDF Author: Jane Eldridge Miller
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136214305
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Unique in its breadth of coverage, Who's Who in Contemporary Women's Writing is a comprehensive, authoritative and enjoyable guide to women's fiction, prose, poetry and drama from around the world in the second half of the twentieth century. Over the course of 1000 entries by over 150 international contributors, a picture emerges of the incredible range of women's writing in our time, from Toni Morrison to Fleur Adcock- all are here. This book includes the established and well-loved but also opens up new worlds of modern literature which may be unfamiliar but are never less than fascinating.

Dangerous Voices

Dangerous Voices PDF Author: Gail Holst-Warhaft
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134908083
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
In Dangerous Voices Holst-Warhaft investigates the power and meaning of the ancient lament, especially women's mourning of the dead, and sets out to discover why legislation was introduced to curb these laments in antiquity. An investigation of laments ranging from New Guinea to Greece suggests that this essentially female art form gave women considerable power over the rituals of death. The threat they posed to the Greek state caused them to be appropriated by male writers including the tragedians. Holst-Warhaft argues that the loss of the traditional lament in Greece and other countries not only deprives women of their traditional control over the rituals of death but leaves all mourners impoverished.

Border Politics in Novels by European Women in Translation

Border Politics in Novels by European Women in Translation PDF Author: Pam Morris
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350434078
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Is conflict inherent to the politics of borders? Recent global events, erupting from national, religious, class, racial and gender boundaries would suggest it is. From the inhumanity of post-Brexit British immigration policy to the violent suppression of women's freedom in Iran, to Russia's territorial invasion of Ukraine, and most immediately to the violent conflagration engulfing Palestine, border hostilities seem everywhere characterised by fearful and toxic intolerance of what is deemed other. This book examines the writing of award-winning European novelists to suggest an alternative perspective, one that redresses time-sanctioned hierarchies of mind over body, of ideals over physical reality. It explores novelistic representations of power, war, sacrifice, heroism, national history and identity, all issues more conventionally viewed within a male consensus. The fiction offers a cultural and imaginative response to border conflicts of all kinds, ethical, bodily, religious, and geographical, often drawing upon the writers' own personal experience of threatening divisions. Examining works by Virginia Woolf, Jenny Erpenbeck, Olga Tokarczuk, Herta Müller, Anna Burns, Chika Unigwe, Maylis de Kerangal, Magda Szabó, Elena Ferranti, Alki Zei, Elif Shafak, and Oksana Zabuzhko, it uses an integrated interdisciplinary approach to combine literary readings with detailed historical and political understanding of cultural context. Coming from many different cultures and histories, these writers speak a common condemnation of all hierarchies of worth and of exceptionalist identities whether sanctified by religion, nature, or tradition. Morris shows how their stories, read here in translation, also articulate a strikingly unified vision of a radical ecological understanding of human relations based on physical continuity and co-existence rather than borders dividing an idealised 'us' from a denigrated 'them'.

Greek Diaspora and Migration since 1700

Greek Diaspora and Migration since 1700 PDF Author: Dimitris Tziovas
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317124782
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
The Greek diaspora is one of the paradigmatic historical diasporas. Though some trace its origins to ancient Greek colonies, it is really a more modern phenomenon. Diaspora, exile and immigration represent three successive phases in Modern Greek history and they are useful vantage points from which to analyse changes in Greek society, politics and culture over the last three centuries. Embracing a wide range of case studies, this volume charts the role of territorial displacements as social and cultural agents from the eighteenth century to the present day and examines their impact on communities, politics, institutional attitudes and culture. By studying migratory trends the aim is to map out the transformation of Greece from a largely homogenous society with a high proportion of emigrants to a more diverse society inundated by immigrants after the end of the Cold War. The originality of this book lies in the bringing together of diaspora, exile and immigration and its focus on developments both inside and outside Greece.

The Eye of the Xenos, Letters about Greece (Durrell Studies 3)

The Eye of the Xenos, Letters about Greece (Durrell Studies 3) PDF Author: Richard Pine
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527569217
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
The condition of Greece, ever since its establishment as a sovereign state in 1830, has been the subject of intense international debate, centring on its pivotal role in the Balkans. This has been aggravated by Greece’s economic collapse in 2010 and by the ongoing refugee crisis, by environmental disasters, terrorism and the Macedonian question. This book’s analysis and assessment of Greek social, cultural and political life is trenchant, up-front and passionate, based on the author’s belief that one cannot love Greece without also mourning the fault-lines in bureaucracy and the dynastic politics which have dominated it since its inception. This book features a selection of the author’s “Letters from Greece” (from The Irish Times) and his “Eye of the Xenos”, from the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, in its entirety, in both English and a Greek translation, including columns which Kathimerini refused to print due to the nature of their political commentary.

The Ghosts of Plaka Beach

The Ghosts of Plaka Beach PDF Author: Stylianos Perrakis
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN: 9780838640906
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Sixty years after the end of World War II Stylianos (Stelios) Perrakis, Greek-born finance professor who has lived most of his life in Canada, went back to Greece to investigate a traumatic event in his family's history that colored his childhood years. The circumstances surrounding the kidnapping and murder of his maternal uncle by a Communist death squad in May 1944, in the Argolida region of the Greek Peloponnese, were cloaked in mystery, never discussed openly by family members. Using trial transcripts, interviews with survivors and with people involved in his uncle's kidnapping, and such primary materials as unpublished diaries and family correspondence, Perrakis managed to document the full sequence of events that led up to this family tragedy. He then widened his focus to draw out the implications of this particular event, painting an intimate picture of a prosperous middle-class provincial world faced with extraordinary challenges that it was unable to overcome.

Portrait of a Greek Imagination

Portrait of a Greek Imagination PDF Author: Michael Herzfeld
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226329093
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
In Portrait of a Greek Imagination, Michael Hetzfeld succeeds in telling the life history of Andreas Nenedakis in a way that beautifully connects autobiographic and ethnographic levels of understanding. One learns a great deal about Nenedakis as a writer and a person while acquiring new knowledge and insight into the spirals of history that have drawn together Cretan, Greek, and European society during the twentieth century. It is an important contribution to the current discussions about the intersection of anthropology and literature.