Book Description
In 1948, as civil war ravaged Greece, children were abducted and sent to communist "camps" inside the Iron Curtain. Eleni Gatzoyiannis, forty-one, defied the traditions of her small village and the terror of the communist insurgents to arrange for the escape of her three daughters and her son, Nicola. For that act, she was imprisoned, tortured, and executed in cold blood.
Nicholas Gage joined his father in Massachusetts at the age of nine and grew up to become a top New York Times investigative reporter, honing his skills with one thought in mind: to return to Greece and uncover the one story he cared about most: the story of his mother.
Eleni takes you into the heart a village destroyed in the name of ideals and into the soul of a truly heroic woman.
Customer Reviews:
First-hand account of the cruelty of war.......2007-08-18
Author Nicholas Gage tells the story of the Greek civil war and how it personally affected him and his family. Most notably this book describes how politics, fear, greed, and desperation combined to culminate in the brutal torture and execution of his mother, Eleni, for the crime of merely saving her children from starvation or forced separation.
My brother highly recommended this book to me. I was a little put off by its length and the obscurity of its subject (I had never even heard about the Greek civil war), but as the story unfolded I found myself completely engrossed in it. The first 100 or so pages were just a little difficult absorb because of the necessary build-up of the scenario and the characters. I also struggled throughout the book to get a grasp of the numerous greek names of people and places. However, these were minor inconveniences to pay for the huge reward of learning about this incredible and disturbing experience.
Nicholas Gage very eloquently describes the cruelty and injustice that war tends to inflict on so many innocent victims. Everyone could benefit from learning about this story that he has so vividly portrayed in Eleni.
addressing wrongs without retaliation.......2007-06-25
This is a very good book written by the son of a woman murdered while trying to escape to freedom with her children from a corrupt government. He wrote about it as an adult investigating what happened and including his memories. He is forgiving as his mother was desiring to do as she would have wished with no retaliating to those who had part in persecuting her.
Pays off in the end.......2007-03-09
This book is written well, but it is a hard read. I didn't think it really grabbed me until about 244 pages in. It is worth it in the end, but you have to want to finish it (or in my case, be required to) in order to enjoy.
Review on Eleni.......2006-11-04
This is an amazing book. It is full of Greek history during WWII and the aftermath thereof. The author does a very good job combining the country's history with his own personal history. I recommend this book to everyone I know.
A Passionate Compelling Work.......2006-08-28
It is sometimes said that each of us has one great book to write, but that few of us will have the talent, time and inclination to write it. And if so, then this is Nicholas Gage's great book, and time, talent and inclination were clearly not lacking.
But there is a recurring problem with books of this kind. While passion is the engine of greatness, it is also the author of blindness. As love is blind, so is anger, and there is plenty of both here.
Nicholas Gage portrays his mother in heroic saintly terms that seem just too good to be true. While there are heroes and saints (and Eleni may well have been both) the inclination to simplify heroes and saints into their types takes away from them as much as it gives. In this case I cannot help feeling that the Eleni of the book is as much the expression of the hope and love and despair of a motherless son than a description of the real person.
And when Nicholas Gage writes in the first person dramatic mode, rather than the expository mode, there are moments where the story rings unconvincing. For example, the scene in which he finds himself in front of the sleeping judge who sentenced his mother to death, with a revolver in his hand, and struggling with the moral dilemma; to kill or not. I am sure Nicholas Gage imagined this kind of encounter on many occasions. I believe it a safe bet that he was never actually in that situation. It must have been clear to him from the outset that the revelation of the facts in this book would be revenge enough, and for the intellectually inclined and gentle character he portrays himself to be, that must have been enough. It is just an intuition of mine, an indication not so much of fact as of Gage's failure to convince me on this detail.
Even so, it is a powerful, compelling and monumental work, written with great passion. Strongly recommended.
Book Description
'A brilliant story....an interesting saga of immigration, belonging and community.' -The Observer(UK) L eaving behind a sparkling social life and successful career, Eleni Gage moved from New York City to Lia-the remote Greek village where her father was born and her grandmother murdered, and which her father, Nicholas Gage, made famous twenty years ago with his international bestseller Eleni.Although her aunts warned she would invite the curse her grandmother placed on any member of her family who returned to Greece, Eleni was determined to come to terms with her family's tragic history. Along the way, she learned to dodge bad omens, battle scorpions on her pillow, and the shadows in her heart. She also came to understand that Greece and its memories were not only dark and death-filled, and that memories of the dead can bring new life to the present and hope to the future. Part travel memoir and part family saga, North of Ithakais, above all, a journey home.
Customer Reviews:
A magificent book.......2007-03-19
This book is a rare treat.
I loved reading it - I was mesmerized by it and during this snowed-in weekend when I read it, I was transported to Lia, where I lived under its magnificent sky with the changing sunset colors (enjoyed from the vernada of the Haidis house); observed up close the house reconstruction project; and came to know an entire village, feeling if not a Liotan myslef, at least like a frequent visitor.
What also springs out of the book, perhaps more than Lia and its people, is the author herself: nice, smart, mature, perceptive and talented.
And a note to her father: you're a great author but she is at least as good a writer as you, not to say better. So please give up the comparisons with her at the Thanksgiving table, there are genetics out there and there is also evolution -- and she has both aplenty. I'm sure you glow with justified pride having her as a daughter. Anyone would!
Bottom Line: A SUPERB BOOK - NOT TO BE MISSED!
the granddaughter speaks.......2007-01-18
The star is still her grandmother, Eleni, killed during the Greek Civil War for trying to save her children. In a word, it's the story of Eleni returning to Lia, the family village, to remember her grandmother close up and rebuild the family house. Without the memory of reading ELENI by her father, Nick Gage, I would never have read or understood NORTH OF ITHAKA. So that's the review: first read Nick's book about his mother, most likely the most riveting and compelling of my 55 year reading career. You should read ELENI, and you must have to understand NORTH OF ITHAKA.
a moving follow up in the "Eleni" series.......2006-07-24
As a half-Greek American, I was moved when reading "Eleni" and "A Time For Us," two books by Eleni Gage's Dad (Nicholas Gage) that detail the atrocities committed against her family during the Greek civil war, which was fought immediately post-World-War-2. Eleni's grandmother (also named Eleni) was ultimately murdered by the communists who were trying to take control over Greece during that war (thank God they did not win) -- she was executed for the crime of helping her children to escape war-torn Greece and ultimately to emigrate to America. "North of Ithaka" is a timely follow-up to this family's story.
Eleni recounts leaving her lucrative job in New York City (around the 2001-2002 timeframe) to move to her family's remote village of Lia, in the province of Epiros in northwestern Greece. There, with financial backing from her Dad, she undertakes rebuilding her grandmother (and namesake) Eleni's home, which was used as a prison during the Greek civil war and had fallen into disrepair over the years.
This book illustrates how even small village life can hold love and meaning to modern, cosmopolitan Americans. I do recommend reading her Dad Nicholas's book "Eleni" before reading "North of Ithaka," since many events discussed in "North of Ithaka" relate to the story of her grandmother's murder, to her family's hardships in Greece, and to their eventual emigration to America. However, it is not essential to read "Eleni" prior to reading this book.
As a bonus, there is a collection of traditional Greek recipes at the end of the book. I bought a briki (Greek coffee pot) and now make 1-2 cups of traditional Greek coffee every day! As Eleni mentions, we call this coffee Greek, never Turkish.
Discover a Grecian Villiage.......2006-06-23
Many times you need to read a book for the sole purpose of stepping outside your own life. Eleni Gage's tale of the year she spent rebuilding her ancestral home in Lia, Greece allows you to do just that. I have read plenty of travel narratives but there are very few that describe a place with such clarity that it feels like you are actually there. The author's father previously wrote about the village of Lia in his work about his mother's imprisonment and execution there. Eleni Gage chose to return to the scene of such tragedy to eliminate the ghosts of her past while rebuilding her grandmother's house for future generations. While moving to a different country to build a home or a new life are common concepts for travel memoirs, very few showcase the emotions that Eleni Gage allows to seep onto the page.
fascinating memoir .......2006-05-03
In 2002, Manhattan magazine editor Eleni N. Gage decided to rebuild her paternal family's villa in the Greek village of Lia on the Albanian border. Her four aunts, residents of Massachuestess, were upset and angry as they feared their neice would be murdered by Albanians. In their minds that was the good outcome; the bad outcome would be the return of the curse of their late mom, Eleni's paternal grandmother, who, in 1948, was tortured and executed for enabling her children to escape the Greek civil war (see ELENI by Nicholas Gage). Still the obsessed Eleni believes she must do this to pay homage to her grandmother and to provide solace to those still impacted over five decades since her murder. With the help of the townsfolk and the hindrance of the bureaucracy, Eleni's odyssey begins.
This is a fascinating memoir that is at its best with the reactions by the author's Greek-American relatives and the Greek villagers to the energetic American's objective. Readers will feel the impact of her grandmother's death on those still living in the village and in Massachusetts though over fifty years have passed. Though warm and well written, NORTH OF ITHAKA never leaves the audience with a sense of importance or wonder even when making the case of good omens vs. evil memories. Still this is a fine entry that is best read after obtaining her father's memoir ELENI that hauntingly describes what happened in 1948.
Harriet Klausner
Book Description
"… a highly developed range that's very beautiful."-Leslie Scalapino
Zhang Er grasps for the spiritual through objects of the mundane, quietly detailing the wonder and desperation that courses through human lives. In these poems, the eye watches the eye so that no facet of our existence remains unexplored. "Zhang Er belongs to the generation beyond lament or anger over the hardship endured by Chinese intellectuals, from overthrown rebellion to construction, from confusion to clarity, from darkness to light (ambiguity to clarity). She walks out of suffering and uncertainty, discovers the loveliness, preciousness of life and self-respect . . ."-(New World Poetry Bimonthly)
From the poem "Verses on Bird":
The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.
From classical fugues to Romanticism, this effort
produced
Schubert. When storms attack, the nightjar's cry
Swells. The noble revolution will require great
Sacrifice, yet do not ask me to capture this process on
the black
And white keys, nor to switch to another tone.
I could not find two birds with identical pitch.
With nothing to induce it, innocence makes me walk
Into rushing water as if I were brave. Empty space is great, but nothing
Repeats itself there. Whether I do
Or whether I don't; from each, the sum of the piano's voice will rise.
Not to be doubted: bird writes poem, one vowel at a time.
Zhang Er was born in Beijing, China and moved to the United States in 1986. Her poetry, nonfiction and essays have appeared in publications throughout the world, and she is the author of multiple books in Chinese and in English translation. She has also participated in projects sponsored by the New York Council for the Arts and by the Minetta Brook Foundation.
Book Description
With a seamless weave of letters, reminiscences, poems and journal entries, Sikelianos creates a loving portrait-and an unblinking indictment-of her father. Jon, a multitalented, eccentric visionary, emerges as a brilliant, charming, irresponsible, frustrating, and ultimately tragic hero.
This is a saga of the rise and fall of family lines-a tale marked by bohemia, Greek poets, intellectuals, drugs and homelessness. It is the story of eccentrics and survivors, the strength of personal vision and the nature of addiction, and what it does to families. An exquisitely rendered exploration of the harrowing and motivating forces of family, history, and individual choices.
Eleni Sikelianos' previous books include Earliest Worlds and the National Poetry Series winner The Monster Lives of Boys & Girls. She lives in Boulder, CO.
Customer Reviews:
Elegaic Feelings American.......2006-06-28
Father's Day, I was in Santa Barbara visiting my daughter. We got sandwiches on lower State Street at the Greek Deli, which, along with Joe's Bar (one of the places I used to look for my old man), I told my daughter that was about all that was left from the 60s and 70s when lower State was Santa Barbara's skid row, and her grandpa lived in the YMCA in that's now a parking lot across from the Greyhound Depot. I could see the more I went on about it, anyway, the distant past held little interest on a day when the sunny boulevard was full of tourists and students shopping boutiques, hopping from sports-bar to dining on tapas in fountained patios. I shut up about her grandfather (who everyone else recalls only, when they bother, as the most essentially alcoholic of men), unable to shake his ghost in parking lots and single occupancy furnished rooms that no longer exist.
I read this book dutifully, thinking, "Okay, I'll do my duty---but we've lived this story, so do we have to read about it, too?" My guess is yes. We haven't heard the end of it yet, and we haven't heard about it in this way before. The untold stories, post-mortem dreams and oblique inferences Sikelianos composes for THE BOOK OF JON cast smoky shadows of hope in the pungent colors of lived experience. Instead of another regurgitated tell-all memoir in the genre as currently marketed, instead of detailing in conventional melodramatic or operatic naturalism the body blows causing the wind to be knocked out of all the childhoods under these kind of fathers, Sikelianos structures THE BOOK OF JON tellingly and evocatively through elision and inference juxtaposed with a poet's snapshot-apt observation. Someone close to me (who's back in rehab again at the moment) once yelled at me, "Never, ever write anything about me! My problems are not the subjects of your poems!" And Sikelianos's BOOK OF JON isn't playing back her father's self-destruction for dramatic effect, for an evening's entertainment. She's not selling her own damage for the sake of authenticity in the market for reminiscences. Instead, with hard looks and casual bluntness, she's made a book of beaded moments that blesses both father and daughter even-handedly. THE BOOK OF JON honors that difficult duty. Its courage reminds me of another memoir, William Stafford's DOWN IN MY HEART, which describes a poet-turned-firefighter's experiences as conscientous objector during a popular, and perhaps necessary, war.
Doomed vernacular.......2005-05-07
while our backgrounds are somewhat different, I could relate pretty explicitly to the world from whence this book comes--a kind of poisonous vernacular. And also the subject matter: the father as an unreachable, doomed anti-hero. Sikelianos engages with the subject matter in a vital fashion, interacting with it on its own terms, but never becoming poisoned by its refulgent mediocrities. A kind of postmodern rethinking of "On the Road," peering unflinchingly at the realities behind the myth of "rugged American individualism." Though it atones all involved with its reaching, a kind of absolution by way of narrative blurring, an alchemy that turns plastic fake wood panelling into gold...
Book Description
California, hedonistically beautiful and increasingly endangered, is the star of this book-length poem that flies through time, memory, science, history, and imagination, mirroring the topography of the Golden State's landscape and the history of its diverse cultures. Alternating between grand, Whitmanic tone and scope, Dickinsonian minute detail, Beat rhythms, New York School wit and Objectivist sensibility, this epic poem engages traditional lyricism with a breathtaking contemporary style and graceful urgency.
A native of California,
Eleni Sikelianos has lived in New York City, Paris and Athens. She is the author of the poetry collection, Earliest Worlds, the memoir, Book of Jon (forthcoming from City Lights), and the National Poetry Series award-winning collection The Monster Lives of Boys and Girls.
Customer Reviews:
Poetiology & poemetics.......2007-01-20
In contrast to the many "excremental" nauseating (poemetics) poems -"Howl" etc - of the past 50+ years, the sensitive and inspired verses of Eleni Sikelianos (great-grand-daughter of the outstanding lyrical poet of Modern Greece), this incremental collection helps us understand the causes - poetiology - of modern "di-versification". It is a mental and occasionally sentimental path (Spanish sendero)towards a California-oriented uni-versality.
A Praise Poem for California!.......2006-12-25
Sikelianos has a Walt Whitman style to her work, if not in language or theme, then at least in scope of project and breadth of the writing. This poem is as much a praise poem to California as "Song of Myself" is a praise poem to Whitman's self. The California Poem is also a language poem on several levels. So much of this book is about the sounds of the words as much as it is about the landscape of California. Sonically, the book is bubbly at times, almost approaching a rolling boil but never quite slipping over the edge into one.
"in California, fire hydrant is a way to say freeway, which in turn turns to freely allies All ye / in come free into dusk motes / at Lake of our Lady" (p 14)
Emerging in this initial poem/piece are children playing hide and seek or kick the can or some other game and at the same time Our Lady of the Lake appears, that water spirit of Arthurian legend as well as a Catholic reference to Lake Arrowhead. So often these little inversions of words and phrases appear, which seem so "Californian", referencing something identifiably as part of California's landscape and identity. The entire book feels rich because of this kind of attention to detail. She included so many elements of California native flora and fauna - she has either done her research or is intimately familiar with the wildlife she mentions so frequently, or both. The place names and their identities are so clearly evoked throughout.
This initial poem (pp 12-17) sets the tone for the whole book and verifies Sikelianos' authority to present her impressions of the landscape of California. This piece is more of a prologue than the one actually titled "Prologue", since this piece mixes California history, personal history, and an intimate relationship with the landscape.
"with / the grace of an / orange, one can / run / over water / without ever sinking" from the poem on pp 122-124 becomes an ode to the orange history of California, the "orange" being the most immediate thing tying these smaller pieces together. This poem has so much history embedded in it, that I imagine if I were to research the orange growing industry of California, I'd be simultaneously peeling away layers of this poem, revealing as many varieties of orange.
Here's one of my favorite passages:
"the low humming bird of trains in the night like a lion with a harmonium / in its throat / running / in its soft clickety-clack socked tracks / along the sea"
Look at those lines! She's definitely proving what can be done with a broken or fragmented syntax and layering of sounds. Her images are turbulent throughout. She truly understands the syntax of the English language to be able to drop out pieces of sentences and still maintain coherent thoughts, ideas and images.
Another piece (pp 175-182) feels like the ocean, like the waves in motion, like a whole cornucopia of life teeming in systemic cohesion, interacting in a symbiotic relationship that doesn't need to be described because it is felt.
Sikelianos at one point reveals her process, her relationship to the language: "RISE UP, ---------------phonemes / cum genomes, let / language disintegrate, tiny / technology in the compost heap" (p 139). So rarely does a poet reveal explicitly how she inhabits the worlds of words.
She also scatters a handful of ASL pictograms throughout the book. I wish I knew sign language and could read them. I suspect they are not at all random.
In fact this longer poem is so intentionally crafted and intimately researched that not a single word feels out of place. The diverse landscape of California deserves a dozen or more books of this length, and even then, not everything will be said or represented.
She even rightly places the self within the landscape in its diminutive place: (p 119)
4x4 destruction:
memory
history
cities
me
She's a keeper! Looking forward to her future books.
A book-length epic poem.......2005-02-03
The California Poem is a book-length epic poem, sparsely illustrated with black-and-white photographs of the California landscape, that spans the time, science, history, and scenery of the Golden State. The sweeping lyrics, evocative of the resilience and beauty of nature, distinguish this breathtaking celebration of California in free verse. "My goal is to relate the descriptions to living animals / Who is truly flea-bitten here? on hills hanging over beaches thatched / with reticent brush, the yellow intensities shining on cliffs, and below, it's / riffled with blue. Which animal?"
Customer Reviews:
Love the recipes.......2005-04-28
The nutrition charts are easy to use, but the recipes are the best part, they are so easy and don't have a lot of crazy ingredients that you can't find at the store.
Average customer rating:
- Eleni, Great story of a trying time in the world.
|
Eleni
Nicholas Gage
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
World War II
| Military
| History
| Subjects
| Books
| Asia
| Eastern Front
| Europe
| General
| Hiroshima & Nagasaki
| Home Front
| Intelligence Operations
| Iwo Jima
| Naval
| Normandy
| Pearl Harbor
| Personal Narratives
| Stalingrad
| Western Front
| Women
ASIN: 0002171473 |
Customer Reviews:
Eleni, Great story of a trying time in the world........2007-10-07
The Greek Civil War 1944-1949 is one of the most interesting of the
communist/ left/ socialist/ insurrections in the 20th century.
The Communists were so routed that in the waning days of that War,
that they took to stealing children to indoctrinate back in Russia.
This is a great story about that horrible time in Greece.
It is the story of a mothers love of her family and her neighbors.
Book Description
Positioned at the crossroads of the maritime routes linking the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, the Yemeni port of Aden grew to be one of the medieval world's greatest commercial hubs.
Average customer rating:
|
Eleni, or Nobody
Rhea Galanaki
Manufacturer: Northwestern University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Contemporary
| General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Literary
| General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Historical
| Genre Fiction
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Similar Items:
-
Deep Blue Almost Black: Selected Fiction
ASIN: 0810118858 |
Book Description
Eleni, or Nobody is a revealing exploration into the impenetrable nature of woman.
Books:
- Every Second Counts
- Faith of My Fathers
- Finding Fish: A Memoir
- Geisha: A Life
- George Washington: The Founding Father (Eminent Lives)
- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
- Helen Keller (Scholastic Biography)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Understanding Business
- Men at War 1914-1918: National Sentiment and Trench Journalism in France during the First World War
- Economic Dynamics: Phase Diagrams and their Economic Application
- Fireplace & Mantel Ideas: Over 100 Classic Wood and Stone Fireplace Mantel Designs
- History: Fiction or Science
- National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Trees: Eastern Region
- Make Your Paycheck Last
- Accounting Systems of U.S. Government Agencies
- Foundations of Fuzzy Logic and Soft Computing: 12th International Fuzzy Systems Association World Co
- The Comparative Physiology of Regulatory Peptides
North of Ithaka: A Granddaughter Returns to Greece and Discovers Her Roots
A Place for Us: A Greek Immigrant Boy's Odyssey to a New Country and an Unknown Father
Not Even My Name: A True Story
It's All Greek to Me!: A Tale of a Mad Dog and an Englishman, Ruins, Retsina--and Real Greeks
Eurydice Street: A Place in Athens
