. . . And Dreams Are Dreams - Vassilikos (Hardcover)

In this new collection of loosely related stories, Greece's most acclaimed living novelist gives us a vivid and complex portrait of contemporary Europe and contemporary Europeans. Here are seven tales that tell, sometimes whimsically and other times bitterly, of the old world facing new dilemmas. In the title story, five friends start a newspaper consisting of nothing more than people's dreams and end up determining the political reality of their country. In "history", a jaded group of guests cavort on an industrialist's yacht, while the captain teaches his grandson the history of modern Greece. In "stories of taxi drivers", one of the newspapermen recounts the dreams of taxi drivers. "Dona Rosita and Don Pacifico" and "three miraculous moments lived by Dona Rosita" comprise a magical realist love story. "The white bear" describes the appearance of a bear in downtown Athens. And in "the transplant", the notebooks of a troubled Greek writer in Rome finish telling of the life and death of Dona Rosita, whose posthumous heart transplant saved the life of her friend.