Eurydice Street: A Place in Athens

by Sofka Zinovieff

Book Overview

A fluid, alluring memoir recounting a family's move to Athens and their adaption to a new culture. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1862077509
• ISBN13: 9781862077508
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Granta Books
• Length: 276 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.0" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Spot On!!

Brilliant!! I was raised in America of Greek parents. I too went to live in Athens as an adult. This book is well written and spot on. Captures the Greek psyche, way of life and ethos. Truthful depiction of life in Athens and its populace. An unbiased, concise history of modern Greece. Tackles all the historical and modern issues relevant to an understanding of today's Greece and its people. Doesn't avoid the touchy issues of attitudes towards Americans, Turks and Albanians. Reintroduced me to the many traditions of my childhood but added rich cultural and linguistic underpinnings and significance. I loved the etymological explanations of common expressions and words - so many of which I use but now have a deeper understanding of them. All that and a great read too. Bravo!!

Informed, Balanced and Entertaining.

Greece is a country of extremes and exaggerated characters. So, it is not surprising that many non-Greek writers describing their experience of Greece and the Greek people have little difficulty telling picturesque anecdotes. Gerald Durrell's books and essays amuse the reader, thought Durrell's writing has a tendency to mock the Greeks from a position of presumed British cultural superiority; and in somewhat the same tradition we have John Mole's account (It's All Greek to Me). Lawrence Durrell (Prospero's Cell) just does not get it quite right; two and a half years and layers of literary pretensions are, respectively, too little and too much to do Corfu justice. Henry Miller (The Colossus of Maroussi) was overwhelmed by his experience, and the gushing metaphorical excess of his account tells us more about his emotional state then it does about the country. Greece seems to draw this kind of awe-struck reaction from Anglo-American travelers. It is a refreshing change to encounter this book by Sofka Zinovieff who is enough of a foreigner to see things with a fresh eye, and yet enough of an insider to really understand what she sees. Her academic training enables her to penetrate the appearances of things, and to draw out the truths behind the Greeks' popular myths and definitions of themselves. To this she brings a wealth of anthropological, historical, sociological and political insight without converting this lovely light hearted and entertaining book into a studious tome. It is a wonderful account and strongly recommended.

Moving to Athens

This charming book was written by a British lady who goes to live in Athens with her Greek-born husband and pre-adolescent daughters. The fact that she is an anthropologist gives her analysis of the city and the Greeks a depth and completeness they would not otherwise have. She loves the Greeks and their ways of living and their values, but she is not therefore blinded to the way they sometimes take moral shortcuts and fail to live up to who and what they claim to be. Her overriding goal is to fit in and be accepted as a Greek wife and mother and citizen. She is delighted when her daughters rapidly learn the language. She relishes her new Greek friendships. She is saddened by the fast pace of urbanization and bemoans the way it combines all the country's worst traits: corruption, money-madness, rejection of traditional values. She knows Greeks have no monopoly on these traits but she hates to see them in a country she loves so thoroughly. The author has quite a sound sense of history and is keenly aware of all the historical and ethnic elements that make up modern Greece. Highly recommended.

Beautifully written account of daily life in today's Athens

In my search for books that would give me a sense of what it's like to live in contemporary Greece, I found Eurydice Street, a book by an anthropologist who is married to a former expatriate Greek. The author and her husband decided in 2001 to move to Greece to live, and raise their two young daughters as Greeks. They find a house in Athens on Eurydice Street, and begin their first year living in Athens as Greek citizens. This book is the story of that year. I have read several books about modern Greece, but Eurydice Street is one of only two (the other being Dinner with Persephone) that I consider outstanding. By "outstanding", I mean that not only is the book well written, but it goes beneath the surface to convey not just customs, practices and descriptions of landscape, but the psychological and feeling aspects of life in the Greek culture. I came away feeling that I understand something about the way Greek people experience life. Ms. Zinovieff writes extremely well, and she brings her anthropologist's eye for cultural norms and folkways to her account. The book takes us through the year, starting in the dead heat of August, and each chapter focuses on a particular aspect of Greek culture -- the festival of Panaigia, Oxi Day, November 17, the Greek way of celebrating Christmas, which is to celebrate the New Year instead, and of course, Easter. Even though the chapters each focus on a particular event in Greek life, they flow naturally because the author experiences these events as part of her family's daily life. By the time you've finished the book, you feel that if you went to Greece to live for a period of time, you would be going to a familiar place that you understand. This is a wonderful book, and I recommend it highly.