The Heart and Its Reasons: Nine Short Stories, by Stella Pierides

Publication Date:  22 October 2014 Available

 Steering a path around islands of the past and the present, mythology  and history, locals and expatriates, refugees and emigrants, loneliness  and aloneness, the fragrance of herbs and the stink of prejudices, the  stories in this book traverse the multifarious landscapes of the heart.  Setting course by Greece – a country filled with the light and darkness  of its past, with wounds still oozing from its wars – the stories explore  a space that is both familiar, unfamiliar, and uncannily universal: the  haunted, multilayered, enticing, and bewitching chambers of the  heart. The sutures keeping it together are pride and longing: for  mother, for father, for home; for recognition, for acceptance, for love,  for truth; for a better world.

From the Back Cover

Pierides reads and renders our soul with the spectacular clarity of the Greek classics and the depth of the world’s greatest introspective writers. Masterfully portrayed characters, whether they find themselves at crossroads or in seemingly everyday situations, wrestle the often Procrustean tendencies of time, traditions, and heartaches, to ultimately glimpse surprising answers to riddles old and new. These eloquent, hypnotic stories translate the experience of Greek expatriates, contemporary hermits, war veterans, daughters, mothers, and many others, into the universal language of a perpetually searching, truth-thirsty humanity. At once actual and mythic, they blend individual memory and the memory of history, to generate a distinct portrait of the European spirit…

—Mia Avramut, writer, Essen, Germany

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Wistful and bittersweet: a collection of engaging stories. Stella Pierides does not shy away from depicting suffering and loss, but a distinctive feature of her work is how she shows her clearly-drawn characters gradually making sense of even the most chaotic of lives. She calls upon her Greek heritage and pan-European outlook to tackle themes of youth and age, the burdens of history, and the irrepressibility of hope.

—Katie Low, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

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Cover painting: ‘Port Isaac: Golden Light’ by Maria Pierides

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Perfect softbound / 104 pages, 90gm cream interior paper / Full-color laminated cover / 129 mm x 198 mm trim size / ISBN: 978-3-944155-04-3

Available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de