Rights Guide 2019-20 (Metaichmio Publications)

11 Nikos Themelis (1947-2011) was a prominent, award-winning nov- elist and political adviser. He studied Law at the University of Thessaloniki and then in Germany where he did his Ph.D. He worked at the Agricultural Bank, the Ministry of Finance, and the Legal Service of the Council of Ministers in Brussels and was an associate of former Greek Prime Minister Kostas Simitis. His first novel was published in 1998 and was awarded the Greek State Literature Prize in 2001. His most notable works, The Quest , The Reversal , and The Gleam constitute an amazing panorama of the Balkans at the tail-end of one century and the first years of the next, from 19th century Asia Minor, to pre-Revolution Russia and the aftermath, through war-stricken Greece. This trilogy has sold more than 700.000 copies and is undoubtedly one the greatest bestsellers in modern Greek literature. Vassilis Gourogiannis was born in 1951. He studied Law in Thessaloniki and worked as a lawyer in Athens for more than thirty years. He is an awarded writer and poet. GREEK FICTION 2001 Greek State Literature Prize (for “The Reversal”) This edition gathers for the first time in one volume Nikos Themelis’ Trilogy. It also includes a note from the author on his influences and critical notes on Themelis’ work. The Quest, the first part of the Trilogy, has been translated into: Turkish: Dogan Kitap, 2002 Italian: Crocetti, 2001 English: Kedros, 2008 German: Piper Verlag, 2001 Notable works: Red on the green line , novel (2010) • Diavazo Magazine Literature Award A script for immortality , novel (2015) Tales of supernatural phenomena , short stories collection (2018) OVER 700.000 COPIES Judicial review (March 2019) Our hero, a member of a Greek underground anti-junta group, escapes in Barcelona after the military police arrest him and his co-conspirators, where he excels as a classics scholar and a homerist. Physically and emotionally scarred, he doesn’t return home but fifty years later. He finds a country in a political, financial, moral and lingual decline, his people steeped in amorality and apathy. Suspended between past and present, trapped between two languages, Greek and Spanish, the experience sends him on a collision course with himself and the world. From a multi-awarded author, this is a book about identity, ideas and language. A cat-scan of an injured society, a unique story about the political scars of former military regimes and the personal scars we bear.