clockroot books
Winner of the Greek national literature prize and book critics’ award
Beautiful, evocative, deeply moving...
—Martin Rubin, Los Angeles Times
The perfect gateway for the reader into a modern
Greece where the classical hero is forgotten and “sits all alone
in a yard, baking in the sun.” Part Marguerite Duras, part
Faulkner, with a dash of Fellini’s Amarcord thrown in…
—Benjamin Anastas
Zigzag through the Bitter Orange Trees
by Ersi Sotiropoulos
translated by Peter Green
Zigzag through the Bitter Orange Trees was acclaimed on publication in Greece as “the best novel of the decade” and became the first novel ever to win both the Greek national prize for literature and Greece’s preeminent book critics’ award.Zigzag tells the stories of four disparate young people in modern Greece: Lia, dying in the hospital from a mysterious virus; her brother Sid, the disaffected wanderer, her only connection to the outside world; Lia's nurse Sotiris, an unstable blend of cowardice and desire; and twelve-year-old Nina, who dreams of breaking away from the humdrum life around her. Their voices mingle in a poignant black comedy of isolation and yearning, illusion and vengeance and the hunger for connection. Sotiropoulos portrays a modern Greece that is wholly her own, at once grotesque and radiant.
ISBN: 9781566566612 • 288 pages • Hardcover • $24.95
