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By Eleni Bistika, KATHIMERINI 16/05/2012 Illustrations for children and adults with a pure childlike heart by Alexis Kyritsopoulos and poetry by Giorgos Seferis – a tender fairy tale from Ikaros Publications and the Benaki Museum has arrived at the newsroom to show us how we can rise just a little higher...And how we need this at a time when everything is in flux and time seems to have come to a standstill in a ‘today’ with no ‘tomorrow’. With beloved and creative souls departing, and those of us who remain trying to keep our wits about us and our composure – both of which are difficult...A painter-poet, Alexis Kyritsopoulos has painted with images and words ‘a fairy tale inspired by the poems of Giorgos Seferis’.The result is a gem of a book that can dispel the gloom and set free the eagle of our carefree childhood years, with ‘Just a Little More’ effort to soar a little higher.The cover shows the way – mutual aid, cooperation, perseverance and the eagle, even without a glider, soars high on the wind of companionship...‘“Once upon a time,” a grandfather and grandson in a small boat with its sail folded begin to unfold the fairy tale it holds within: a mermaid in the open sea, sea caves, and a shipwreck, just like at the bottom of Kaldera. The journey continues until, in the grandfather’s garden amidst the wildflowers and the green grasses of spring, the grandson discovers the secret of friendship, which lasts forever, even when the fairy tale ends. Alexis Kyritsopoulos dedicates it ‘to Zoe and Anastasia’.

In the village of Symi, 500 steps uphill from Gialos, there is a café hidden away in the narrow streets, called Elia. Janine and Tina, the owners, came to Symi 13 years ago and decided to settle on the island. Elia (or Olive Tree for visitors) is more than just a simple café. It organises guided tours, excursions and photography walks, whilst also offering a range of catering services, including cakes and tarts for special occasions. What struck me, however, were the books. The space is very well-kept and cosy – unlike most tourist cafés on the islands. In every corner, there are books – lots of books. “This is where I keep my favourite cookbooks,” Janine tells me as I browse through them and notice little notes and dog-eared pages on her favourite recipes. Next to us, a tourist from England is using the laptop provided for guests to write to her own family. Next to the sofa where we’re sitting, there’s a bookcase full of children’s books, most of them in English. Out of professional curiosity, I start taking them down one by one, whilst Janine tells us with a smile that if we want, we can play with the Lego in a huge bucket. “I have children and I know what it’s like to have them around whilst you’re trying to have a coffee.” Beneath the stacks of books, there are notebooks and coloured felt-tip pens for budding Picassos. Among the books, I’m delighted to find three or four by Axel Scheffler, whose books we’ve already published at Ikaros. A chocolate cake later, we say goodbye to Janine and head down the wide steps of Kalis Stratas, and I think to myself: Why don’t you see books in shops like this more often? Is it down to the owner? A matter of culture? Arriving at Yialos, passing in front of the tavernas, I count the aquariums...

By Nikos Vatopoulos, KATHIMERINI 28/04/2012 A biography that is a pleasure to read and offers a wealth of information as well as inspiration for further reading, is the work of the academic Konstantinos Svolopoulos, who has published his study on Konstantinos Karamanlis in Greek. It is a formidable challenge to present a political biography of a man of K. Karamanlis’s stature in just 250 pages, but it is precisely this density of expression that lends the reading vigour and intensity.It is a classic biography, that is to say, one that begins with his birth and ends with his death. If anything characterises historian Konstantinos Svolopoulos’s work above all else, it is his adoption of scientific methodology, which excludes the mediation of hindsight and adheres to the narrative of historical time.Of course, Konstantinos Svolopoulos is a man who knew Karamanlis personally and is himself the founder and, since then, general director of the Konstantinos Karamanlis Foundation. The reader can detect between the lines a certain ‘warmth’ of familiarity with the man and an understanding of his environment. However, one cannot say that there is any subjectivity. What is of particular interest is the emphasis K. Svolopoulos places on the wider context.I particularly liked the many references to the Macedonian issue, which is also linked to Karamanlis’s childhood experiences (let us not forget that when he was born, in 1907, Macedonia still belonged to the Ottoman Empire), his early years in Athens in the 1930s as a young lawyer, the analysis of his character, his asceticism and his obsession with ideals, his need to serve, his belief in political stability, and his ambition in the 1950s to lift Greece out of underdevelopment and anchor it to Western Europe. The narrative reaches its conclusion. It is interesting that K. Svolopoulos emphasises Karamanlis’s study of the ancient Greeks, from whom he was influenced on fundamental issues of political philosophy. This occurred mainly after 1963 and during his years in Paris. Karamanlis believed that Greece might not be able to compare with the wealthy countries in terms of economic size, but that it was fully competitive in terms of its culture. It is telling that, during Karamanlis’s first term, Pikionis was commissioned to redesign the area around the Acropolis. The transition to democracy, accession to the then EEC and the period of the presidency are also analysed, as are relations with A. Papandreou. One has everything to gain from reading this book. Konstantinos Svolopoulos, ‘Karamanlis, 1907–1998. A Political Biography’

By Mikela Chartoulari, Vivliodromio, 7 April 2012«Instead of herding all these people into concentration camps, it would be worth spending man-hours to see how... Dimitris Nollas strongly disagrees, as he told me, with the government’s plan for migrant detention centres. He is one of the first modern Greek writers to have given a leading role in his short stories and novels to these ‘others’ who, for twenty years now, have been flooding into our country to save themselves and their loved ones who have remained beyond the Murgana or in the depths of Asia and Africa. His perspective bears the mark of Christian love, yet his approach is neither romantic nor naive. For Nollas knows how complex the issue of relations between modern Greeks and foreigners is, but he also knows how the issue was dealt with in previous phases of Greek history (‘we have always assimilated the hordes from the East’). And he has seen how multi-ethnic societies can function in the West. That is why he never uses the term ‘illegal immigrants’. They can assimilate them. The only solution to the immigration issue is to grant them citizenship. ‘Foreigners have a better chance of becoming true Greeks than various political opportunists who speak Greek.’ His new book, therefore, is particularly timely: it comprises ten short stories from the last eight years and is titled ‘In the Land’ (published by Ikaros), in which four stories depict the difficult coexistence of locals and foreigners, who struggle whilst the prevailing atmosphere poisons them. The harshest, ‘The Price of Dreams’, transports us to the courtyard of a temporary refugee camp, set up in a dilapidated building next to the rubbish tip, where we witness something akin to a rehearsal for the lynching of a pedlar. A gentle but broken figure, he was laying out his wares outside, cheap perfumes and cosmetics which he sold by the bottle, and only little Asmat, who could not afford to buy anything, spoke to him – a gesture which her mother, however, misinterpreted. So, when he stroked her head and gave her a small gift, her family flew into a rage and beat him to a pulp. Until two bored policemen arrived and rushed to close the case by shifting the blame onto the street vendor’s licence... Things aren’t black and white, Nollas tells us here, and he invites us to reflect on how poverty and shattered hopes affect human relationships.In his other stories, Rolando or Roules teaches a lesson in solidarity to the Greek man who gave him a synthesiser so he could play music and share the pennies he earns. The second-generation Turkish immigrant in Germany throws his German wife out of the window, feeling humiliated because she has cheated on him. And the dark-skinned foreign worker on the island feels unable to accept the proposal of the scorned young widow to stay together. Why all this? Because for a modern society to function, it must assimilate foreign value systems as well; yet these are not matters that can be settled wholesale and impersonally, through laws... ‘Politicians, however, are wasting time while eyeing the funds. But local communities will overturn their plans.” Ultimately, this book contains ideological and philosophical views that reflect the image presented by Greek society in the wake of the Olympic Games. In the recent short story ‘Inevitable Encounters’, for example, Nollas tells us of three friends who meet again after years apart, prompted by an old deception, and notes: ‘When you have lived a life without ever lending or borrowing, a life without give and take with others, a life without love; when you have never learnt this, how can you now take on the burden of another?’ In the equally new ‘A Loaf of Bread in Two’, where a long-unmarried, beloved couple living in poverty discuss a lost inheritance, he writes: “Setbacks, something that can turn into a disaster, bear witness to a life that is vibrant and ever fresh; they can be the catalyst, an opportunity for change.”Thus, by focusing on our relationship with the other or their ghost, this collection of short stories captures the resignation but also the will to live of today’s Greeks, the greed but also the solidarity, and above all the confusion that pervades a society emerging from a period of lawlessness where people had become wolves. The only lifeline for this situation, his stories suggest, is love for one’s neighbour (…‘and not for the idea of the neighbour’). ‘‘I belong to the party of those mad with freedom,’ comments Nollas. ‘Because I have learnt the “Grand Inquisitor” from “The Brothers Karamazov” by heart, and I know that if you accept compromises and make concessions, you open the door to totalitarianism. That is what happened in the 1980s when this society traded its vote and its tolerance for material goods…". A writer who has delved into the story of the Polytechnic generation or terrorism, the Nollas of today has turned his back on parties and politicians. And whilst he admits to having voted for ‘everything except the Far Right and PASOK’, he now prefers to declare himself ready to fight not for revolutionary utopias but for constants (language, nation), as the title of his book also suggests. And as an example of grassroots social policy, he acknowledges the Church’s work with soup kitchens, solidarity and its comforting activities. ‘Of course we must be in Europe and change many things, but if the Greek people are to be wiped out, well, no! Dimitris Nollas’s book *In the Land* will be published by Ikaros after the Easter holidays.