Kedros Publishers 1996
Modern Greek Writers
172 pages
Translation Fred A. Reed
Title in Greek: Ta Tzitzikia

They're the gang that can't shoot straight: tough-guy wannabes straight out of a Greek-subtitled version of Thieves Like Us, down-market motorcycle punks (no Hell's angels these), dead-end kids from the urban depths with foulmouthed girlfriends and parents as remote as prosperity. Innocents with attitude.

Stamati, the bumbling ringleader, his faithful side-kick Takouli, and Foti, a self-styled strong, silent type who falls for a horny journalist, form a threesome with no past, no future, and a present as insouciant and short-lived as a cicada. Armed with little more than an empty shotgun and plenty of bravado, the three blow their big chance: a hold-up at a district tax office.

Their Technicolor dream comes unraveled on a furious motorcycle ride north, in a comic brawl on a deserted beach, and in the final ignominy of capture under the flashing lights of a provincial disco.

Life, suggests The Cicadas, is as tough, nasty and indifferent as a B thriller. Vangelis Raptopoulos' characters, sketched with sure-handed emphaty, and with a knife-edged ear for the hard humor of the street, throb with the fervid intensity of cicadas buzzing in the noonday heat. Nothing in their voice intimated how soon they will die.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Summer clearance going to the person who wished for it.
Have fun with the book!

Thanks hippolein!

I recently read another book by a Greek writer centered around the same theme and with similar protagonists. I've enjoyed both, particularly because of the setting; it's so refreshing for a story to be set outside the Anglo-Saxon world.

In both these books, the young protagonists have had a similar outlook on life, one without any real prospects. I wonder if the situation of young people in Greece is even more pronounced now with all the economic turmoil the country is in the middle of.

This book is reserved for my European Literature VBB.

172 pages

Off to Chania. Enjoy!

Thanks, I will!

Well, I didn't enjoy this book very much, it was too bleak and depressing for my mood at the moment. Still it was interesting and I'm glad I read it.

Reserved for a rabck.

Avl for now.

Taking this to a new Bookcrosser in Kokkola :)

Back to me!

Happy Reading!