Achilles' fiancée

Achilles' fiancée

The book has received the 2002 Premio Acerbi in Italy.

Set in Paris sometime after the 1967 military coup in Greece. Eleni, together with a group of friends and fellow political exiles, finds herself working as an extra in a French film: â€œThe Horror Trainâ€. It is not the first time she has been caught up in a deadly drama, nor is it her first ride on a horror train. As the director waves his arms, shouting directions and re-shooting the sequence, Eleni's mind wanders to her first train ride: â€œAthens-Piraeus. My first long journey by train.â€ â€œ- You're Eleni? I'm Achilles.â€ â€œThey don't ask which Achilles. One name is enough...â€

For the rest of her life, Eleni will be "Achilles' fiancÃ©e"; fiancÃ©e of the guerrilla leader, the brave, handsome kapetanios whose code name is Achilles. In the demonstrations against the German occupiers of Greece during World War II, in prison where she risks a death sentence during the civil war that followed, in Tashkent where Greek communists fled as political refugees and eventually, in Paris. But throughout, Eleni acquires her own personality with self-determination and independent thinking. As she begins to question the slogans she used to fight for when she blindly followed the leaders of the Party like her fiancÃ©, Eleni involves us in her own private world of self-awareness. It is a woman's world, where human warmth and friendships count for more than abstract ideals.

The Greek word for a novel is mythistorema, a word that combines myth and history. In her story of a young woman's struggle to survive through a hard period of Greek history, Alki Zei has woven the threads of her own quasi-mythical life into the stuff of history.
The novel Achillesâ€™ FiancÃ©e has been a top-selling book since it was first published in Greece in 1987. It has also been translated into French, Italian, German, Spanish, Danish and Turkish.
â€œAlki Zei has written history like masters do, gingerly and discreetly.â€
Sofia Castellanos, A Cubierta Libros, 2014

â€œAchillesâ€™ FiancÃ©e is a superb book that has marked Greeceâ€™s modern literature.â€
Demosthene Kourtovic, Scholiastis magazine, 2012

â€œGood books do not become outdated with time. They are read by new generations of readers, as if they are new every time.â€
Yannis Papatheodorou, Diavazo Magazine, 2012

â€œBetween the lines of the narrative, important issues regarding human dignity and substance, self- determination and freedom, faith and ideology, are touched.â€
George Theocharis, Book Press, 2012

â€œThe narrative becomes immediately compelling because the author manages to convert a biographical story into a collective issue.â€
Anna Paini, Libreria delle Donne di Milano, 1998

Achillesâ€™ FiancÃ©e, With a Faber Number Two Pencil and Wildcat under Glass form a sort of trilogy in which 50 years of Greek history is covered by Alki Zeiâ€™s exquisite and distinguished narrative.

Country	USA
Author	Alki Zei
Binding	Kindle Edition
Edition	1
Format	Kindle eBook
IsAdultProduct
Label	Angelica Vouloumanou
Manufacturer	Angelica Vouloumanou
NumberOfPages	412
PublicationDate	2015-10-22
Publisher	Angelica Vouloumanou
ReleaseDate	2015-10-22
Studio	Angelica Vouloumanou

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