It's one thing to write and pretend, and another to write without any other ambition, except for that moment's mood. You write about Dimitris Chatzis, Giorgos Cheimonas, Melpo Axioti, Aris Alexandrou, Giannis Ritsos; you write about the publisher Nana Kallianesi; you design three small pieces that could be prose, but you know they are not, yet you write them to submit to magazines and dedicate two of them to two of your friends, and the other one, now, to the prose writer Giorgos Ioannou; you write full of anger about the post-dictatorship era - "anger is not from the sacrifice and the boiling of the soul, it has another name," Socrates says in Plato's Cratylus; you write two pieces about prose that might not have been written like this if you didn't have a rather disapproving critique of one of your books in mind, and look, how drastic and essential critiques can become; and one piece about Cronus who ate his children. Thirteen pieces in chronological order, within ten years, with diary notes, as if you wrote a prose for yourself, thanking your good luck in a sad world. Sentiments! Because that's how you are, dedicated for life to what you have gained - you think of Manolis Anagnostakis and Nora who live wisely in Pefki. You will continue with the few friends you have left and with your deceased ones, you will write two or three more novels; neither stingy nor moderate. You couldn't not thank Thanasis T. Niarhos, the inspirer and responsible for this valuable series. Thanks to him, some of your scattered pages became a book - "The prose writer and his jug".

Maro Douka