Agra publications present detective novels with black magic, drugs, politics, racism, poetic works of Andreas Empirikos referring to Athens and a book about exile and war.
Zulu, Caryl Férey
An excellent crime novel with diabolical grace. Black magic, drugs, politics, racism make up an Apocalypse scene. Police officer Ali Newman is the head of the forensic service in Cape Town, the showcase state of South Africa. He is Zulu. As a child, he witnessed the brutal killing of his father and brother by national guards because of their political beliefs, and this memory haunts him. Newman is doing his duty in a country torn apart by crime and gang activity, AIDS, poverty, destitution and social discrimination. The situation escalates dangerously when the body of a young white woman is discovered. Although apartheid is a thing of the past, old enemies continue to lurk in the shadows.
The Caravaggio Mania, Oliver Banks
An art dealer at a small New York auction house, about to play the big game of his life at a private auction of stolen Renaissance art, is found murdered with a knife in the back, and detective Amos Hatcher, who works in solving art thefts, he leaves for Rome to find the solution. Starting with a single clue—a lewd inscription in ancient Italian—Hutcher constructs a terrifyingly contradictory portrait of the killer: an uncanny criminal mastermind with extraordinary erudition and inhuman instincts who worships Caravaggio.
Stiu, Theodore Festas
After the Postcolonization, when the hero of the book finds himself as a student in the country of Ceausescu’s distorted socialism, he is confronted with the distorted implementation and final refutation of his visions. After being kicked out of Romania, she will deny everything, throwing the baby away with the bromonera. Ego will prevail. He will follow a variety of routes and, when he finally returns permanently to Greece, he will be rewarded with an elite position in the sun, leaving behind his radical past for good. But this is not without cost. If the social rise is rapid, it risks losing its measure. After all, what goes up fast comes down even faster. Some find the courage to rise again. A new life, friends, love, example and another place may help to find the ego again in the we.
The Polis as an entelechy, Alexandros Papageorgiou-Venetas
Selection, analysis and commentary of passages of the poetic work of Andreas Empirikos, which refer to the city and in particular to Athens, by the architect-urban planner and Athenian citizen Alexandros Papageorgiou-Venetas, which concludes: “The attitude of the poet towards his living space is praiseworthy. The peaceful Attic landscape hides within it pulsating forces: diffused light, incessant movement, noisy, unstoppable vigilance, which fascinate him”.
Journey. War. Exile., Etel Adnan
“I come from an area of the world that has been gassed and torn apart by war since the beginning of the 20th century. My memory and my everyday life have been woven by war. I have often wondered how such a sensitive system as the human body can withstand such often repeated crashes as the Arab Near East experienced and continues to experience. […] A real, in the biblical sense, Exodus followed: at first a small stream and gradually a real river. The Lebanese had started to leave. Buildings were also disappearing, neighborhoods, streets. I discovered – experienced – the deepest meaning of exile. I was in Beirut and I could see that the city was never going to develop normally again, saving the core of the city that was. I understood, without exaggeration, the meaning of the expression Lost Paradise. […] Exile is irrevocable deprivation. It is always accompanied by a feeling of deep humiliation”
