Mythology

Prologue to the third edition

The very title of this book automatically summons up the days of story and legend. The twelve short tales contained in this work considered by many to constitute a single story, are written in the third person (a new departure for the author), and betray a more objective view of the world and a more substantive exploitation of his social probing. This does not however mean that he has entirely abandoned the technique which served him so well in his earlier works (e.g. The Garden of the Princes), based on fleeting memory, fluidity of event, concatenations of thoughts and relationships.

The twelve tales in "Mythology" (first published in 1977) transmute, as one critic has put it, an old family history into a national myth Towards the end of the 19th century a village lad from Epirus comes to Thessaloniki to seek his fortune, shares that city's turbulent history for the next half century, succeeds -overcoming a thousand difficulties- in building up an estate, only to end his days ruined and palsied. Along with the story of his life as presented in successive scenes, there unfolds in these tales a picture of the development of urban life in modern Greece, in all its positive and negative aspects. This book won widespread critical acclaim and was awarded the "Plotinus" prize.