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Author Thu Oct 17 2013
Author Natalie Bakopoulos Reads The Green Shore @ National Hellenic Museum
To put it mildly, Greece is a country in chaos. As a result of its severe debt crisis, it struggles with austerity measures, labor strikes, bloated government institutions, and an unemployment rate of 27.6 percent.
But this is not the first time Greece has encountered political pandemonium. Natalie Bakopoulos' debut novel, The Green Shore, harkens us back to a similarly tumultuous time in Greek history. In 1967, a group of Greek military colonels executed a coup d'etat under the cover of night. Democracy would not be restored until seven years later.
The aftermath of the coup is seen through the eyes of four characters: French literature student Sophie, her doctor mother Eleni, her poet uncle Mihalis, and her younger sister Anna. Each character copes with the sweeping and often brutal political changes while continuing their personal stories, following dreams and passions, and experiencing new vistas physically, emotionally and politically.
According to Bakopoulos, "The Green Shore is not just about living in a time of political instability or fear. It's about love and heartache and negotiating our own personal boundaries: what we are comfortable with, what we are not, and how we can figure out the difference. How we survive. What I want is for my characters to feel abundantly and complexly human. Fiction isn't about what happened--we have wonderful historians and nonfiction writers and journalists for that--but about what something felt like."
Natalie Bakopoulos, a 2010 O. Henry Award winner, will be reading from The Green Shore at the National Hellenic Museum (333 S. Halsted St.) on Thursday, October 17 at 6:30pm. Admission is $10.
Images courtesy of the Simon & Schuster website.
