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Mediterranean: Stories Told to a Bird Woman Sylvia Ioannides |
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Synopsis: Toss a Mediterranean motif of pagan magic alongside a Laurentian concern with the many viscissitudes of love and you have a good idea what this collection is all about. While her images and plots are fantastical, Ioannides’ prose is simple, in the most elegant sense of an oral storyteller’s bare-bones approach to simplicity. Her characters typically field themselves into the romantic and the anti-romantic camps. While the latter find themselves ruled by state or religious commandments to the point of sad strictures, even anality (a post Freudian coinage), the former find themselves misunderstood and—not shamed, for they all proceed with an inner surety— but isolated or even persecuted. If anything, Ioannides seems to be saying, we join hands in refusing to join hands, in refusing to dive into Laurentian love. Thus the irony of the entire collection. ISBN, trade paper: 978-1-931982-09-2, $14.95 Sale $7.50 ISBN, library edition: 978-1-931982-08-5, $26.00 Sale $13.00 |
About
the Author:
Sylvia Ioannides was born on the island of Cyprus. This is her first novel. She has several more. She holds a bachelor’s degree in American history, plus a bachelor’s degree in Education. |
Excerpt From the
Book:
There
is a strange wind following me, like a maddening death lingering at my heels; it
seems that wherever I might tread in the sensual heat of Algiers, I am met by
the crowds of the busy harbor and the distant open sky where clouds move like
lofty ships over the wild exuberant sea, whose circular body lifts in erotic
ecstasy to meet the gleam of a triumphant sun. |