The Last Greek Aris Fioretos

The Last Greek

ORIGINAL TITLE: Den siste greken

AUTHOR: Aris Fioretos

ORIGINAL PUBLISHER: Norstedts förlag

GENRE: Fiction

Meet Yannis Georgiadis – beaming, muscular and with a Robert Mitchum dimple in his chin. One winter’s day in 1967 he steps into the surgical ward in Kristianstad, and ends up staying in Sweden. We meet him as flat-footed
son and dreamy shepherd, as worker, husband and father, but also as motorist on the E70 outside Zagreb one leaden afternoon in November. He plays croquet like a (demi-) god and knows nearly everything about water in its various forms.

Penning the portrait is the fictitious narrator Kostas Kezdoglou. Over a hundred-odd tableaux, he describes the Greek diaspora – from the fire in Smyrna in 1922 until the guest workers of the 1960s. But why write on index cards? And why a biography of his friend Yannis? The Last Greek reveals itself to be a tale of love, friendship and betrayal. As well as of Greeks, of course, who are always “good for a surprise at the last minute”…

Portraying a man who believes he is made up of other people, Aris Fioretos’ new novel is a moving account of the joys and curses of migration, of promises kept and of promises broken. In short: a novel of adventurous hearts.

Reviews

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"A surprising, devastating, and wise novel with a tad of madness, that one wanst to reread as soon as the end has been reached ..."

Sandra Kegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
“It is a great moment when literature and love merge and become one.”
Helmut Böttiger, Die Zeit

Rights sold

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Dutch Rights sold to Querido

French Rights sold to Actes Sud

German Rights sold to Carl Hanser

Greek Rights sold to Kastaniotis

Norwegian Rights sold to Agora