Short story
Gregory
Γκρέκορυ
Panos Ioannides · 1964
Synopsis
Somewhere on the island, in the time of the armed struggle against the British, though the period is never named, a small group of Greek Cypriot fighters hold an English soldier hostage. The prisoner is called Gregory; day after day, a friendship grows between him and his guards. Then the order to execute him arrives. The author had the story from a cousin who had fought, and wrote it in one go, in an hour and a half.
Context
The short story appeared in 1964 in the author's first collection, published in Athens by Fexis. He rewrote it for the stage, and the play, filmed for the island's television, won the first prize at the international theatre festival of Sofia in 1976; its broadcast brought threats to its author, who had drawn on a real case of that time. It was reissued in English in 2009 in a collection of twelve stories.
Who it is for
A brief short story in Greek, to be read in one sitting, for those who want to see the anticolonial insurrection from the consciousness of a fighter.
Prizes and reception
Translated into dozens of languages, even into Braille, it appears in major international anthologies.
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