A Mistake from the Very Start

By Giannis Ziotis

The adventure begins in 1945 and ends today.
Back then, need and hunger constantly emigrated, directly threatening whole populations with extinction.
Some people, in a slough of despond because of impoverishment, opened their hands wide along the narrow alleys to touch the house walls, which would keep them company.
Back then, there was so much moisture inside people, inversely proportional to the modern era...
History, nowadays, seems to long for an update...
When the night falls, heroes seek some hope to hold on to, fighting a losing battle on roads of tension, just like a coin that, once it slips, strives to stay up on both sides.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iWrite - Pigi - Daidaleos
• Release date: Sep 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9786185218409

Giannis Ziotis

Giannis Ziotis was born in Andros in 1976 to two hardworking parents. His works have been translated abroad. He has received awards, and is deemed to be one of the most widely acclaimed authors of his generation. He has studies Journalism, which he has served with consistency. His book, “A mistake from the very start,” is his seventh novel. He attributes his authorial rebirth to Antonis Samarakis, his precious friend and mentor. Giannis Ziotis is inspired by everyday life. After all, he himself is an indispensable part of the road. Through his work, he has managed to be on the same wavelength with his broad readership, be loved, and talked about, like no one else in his generation.

Book preview

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Blurb

I am not faced with virtual-reality situations, but I feel like I’m in the middle of a storm that I cannot handle, in an enormous casino, where the remaining regulars bet their last chips on my elimination. That’s what Prokopis would say, the most experienced redactor of the World in a Trance newspaper, probably sensing the red line he was crossing. Sometimes, it is not enough to love and be loved with all your might. What matters is the invisible power that holds the sandglass and shakes it imperatively against you, to rapidly drain it to the very last grain.

And, of course, that is not fair God.

A fictional story about a mistake from the very start…

title: a mistake from the very start...

author: Giannis Ziotis

translated by Dr. Dimitris Thanasoulas

ebook edition: April 2018

isbn: 978-618-5218-40-9

website: www.iWrite.gr

contact us: 2311 27 28 03 | [e-mail]

book’s artwork, layout, cover design & book curation was done by iWrite.gr publishing atelier

iWrite Creative Team

http://www.iWrite.gr

Copyright © by Giannis Ziotis & iWrite Publications. Unauthorized reproduction of this ebook is prohibited under the Copyright law of the European Union and the international Intellectual property law schemes.

Author’s bio

Giannis Ziotis was born in Andros in 1976 to two hardworking parents. His works have been translated abroad. He has received awards, and is deemed to be one of the most widely acclaimed authors of his generation.

He has studies Journalism, which he has served with consistency. His book, A mistake from the very start, is his seventh novel.

He attributes his authorial rebirth to Antonis Samarakis, his precious friend and mentor. Giannis Ziotis is inspired by everyday life. After all, he himself is an indispensable part of the road.

Through his work, he has managed to be on the same wavelength with his broad readership, be loved, and talked about, like no one else in his generation.

To Giannis. Giannis, hang in there...

- Giannis Ziotis

On the day of Saints Konstantinos and Eleni, in the ‘shadow’ of his journalist’s office, where everyone loads and resuscitates their memories and thoughts, a short distance from the sun that shines almost unhindered upon the neighbourhood’s unrented traditional bakery, which has long stopped emitting the smell of fresh bread, glum and in debt up to his eyeballs, numbed from the fluctuations, the torments, and the unrequited passions of the time, fifty-year-old Prokopis silently whispered, like in a mumble, in front of his typewriter, about a refugee love during the migration years.

That was the best news that could run through him, as long as he decided to deal the cards again, and leave aside the negative images of the current events that he was obliged, with difficulty now, to write down on the daily.

In vain…

Nevertheless, my hero was lucky at the beginning of his career, unlike in the love department, because he was journalistically nurtured, receiving education and deontology lessons from big names of the field who, sensing his morality, generously taught him everything they knew about the profession and helped him move fast up the hierarchy and become a leading figure in the printed Press; in turn, he did not refuse to give chances to ordinary people as in exchange for the generosity he had received!

The one he felt a special love and respect for was Asia-Minor-rooted Mr. Pavlos, who would get up from his chair to impart him precious professional knowledge and personal support, as well as tonnes of memories of the events that marked a whole era, until the celestial veil between them was covered in haze.

Prokopis, himself coming from that torturing period, his soul disturbed and his breath drifting away on the paper, agonised over the unusual situations he saw crossing his path, dynamically giving substance, through the newspaper that he kept away from the internet, to the distant past, the gloomy present, as well as the uncertain future of the societies that flirted once again with emigration and deprivation under fast forward conditions!

"Today, people live at the mercy of a sudden downpour that leaves as abruptly as it comes, and destroys, as if it never passed before their eyes. At that same speed we fall in love, we break up, we easily forget, and we experience all things superficially. It is not surprising anymore to see unhappy fellow citizens who were condemned to social isolation and wander around the trash containers hungry and scruffy! Our mind got used to the ugliness and repetition, to their projection in the social media and the evening news, and it does not process the facts; it doesn’t store them; it dumps them within seconds.

We live a conflicting life that will result in a quick and painful ending, and those of us who will be saved will soon forget that too…, evidently disappointed, the traditional journalist insightfully warned his readers.

He did exactly what a writer ought to do, that is, admit that he doesn’t have the slightest doubt about how the fate of the heroes in the imaginary story he is going to narrate will be equally quick, and how oblivion will come about instantaneously, in a flash, like a deus ex machina of all things.

So, the experienced redactor– that’s what he liked to be called–, who had, among others, the title of newspaper publisher at the daily World in a Trance, and consciously kept refraining from publishing its content online, ostentatiously ignoring his power, was preparing himself to come back stronger than before at the forefront of journalism, weary now due to the continuous defeats and the debt he incurred while fighting, as well as due to an unrequited love that, through a fault of his own, hit him to the core.

That morning of May 21st, he was walking nervously and worriedly; he seemed to yearn for a woman’s hug, which he had missed for a long time, someone to protect him from the rivers of History, as he sensed the red line passing before the eyes of those who would condemn him in their conscience because he did not remain silent and did not appear to be so unaffected by the nightmare spreading before him day in day out.

For days, he had been consciously preparing a special text, a cry of solidarity against the feelings stepping back and the got-used-to-it look that a considerable number of citizens had, a justified mental shrinking, an immense fatigue of the people before the repeated images of penury, before the drama composed of innocent souls squeezing each other for a breadcrumb in the centre of Athens.

Prokopis constantly felt like drowning when he witnessed several hungry old men; he wanted to scream for them, to wake the youth; at the same time, he fought to appease both his own need that persistently turned around inside of him and threatened to destroy him because of his debt and