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208 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2018
Διαβάστε και την ελληνική κριτική στις βιβλιοαλχημείες.
One of the few Cypriot books translated in English.
When my grandmother bought the English translation I was enthralled by its premise.
It's the opposite of «Rosemary's Baby» set in the Cypriot mountains. A woman with cancer is impregnated not by a demon but by an angel.
It was written in 1973 and won the National Prize for Literature. It is considered one of the first magical realism novels written by a Cypriot and one of the first written in Greek.
I read it four years ago in translation. This year it was time to read the original in Greek.
For some strange reason the translation of this book and its author's page in English are listed separately here. And since I'm not a Goodreads Librarian I cannot combine them.
I also find it ironic that a Cypriot book has absolutely NO reviews by Cypriots but me.
One more example of how little Cypriots appreciate and read native writers.
The first time I read it I said (in my first review) that I had difficulty in understanding whose point of view I was reading each time.
Some times the paragraphs were too short, just a few lines of poetic words and phrases.
Some other times the dialogues were muted dots . . . . .? An experimental format.
Critics said that every single word in this book counts but I felt confused. I didn't really know what was going on.
To give you the gist. Maria and Joseph Akritas (allusion to Christ's foster parents) come to settle in a mountainous village in Cyprus (Spilia). There, Maria meets the angelically beautiful young man Michael (allusion to Archangel Michael) and a couple of elf-looking elders from Russia and Israel (angels).
Maria has intercourse with Michael and she conceives an entity that I didn't really understand what it was exactly, and whether Maria survived the pregnancy, cancer, or became one with this entity.
If Rosemary's baby was the product of a satanic union, this 'baby' is the product of an angelic union.
Then I concluded my review with the following:
The characters were not really likeable, and they didn't seem human enough to me.
They were almost like caricatures, symbolic puppets, conveying a meaning.
The ending is very open-ended and I have to say I will certainly re-read it in the original Greek.
And here I am, four years later, having read the Greek original and still feeling the same confusion and distancing from the story and its characters.
Even though I will read more by this author and further discover his work, this particular novel even in its original felt wooden and stiff, just like the reading experience which was buried under heaps of symbolism.