THOSE WHO SLEPT THE NIGHT ON THE ROAD

The novel by Yiannis Priovolos 'Those who spent the night on the road' was released by Aktis Publications. The narrative of the historical novel unfolds in the last three decades of the 19th and early 20th centuries in north-western Morea. The text marries historical memory with the richness of the author's memories. Divided into 25 chapters, each flooded with images and sounds, it synthesizes as many aspects of the story of three generations of a farming family and their efforts to acquire land, condemned for the most part by the feudal form of Greek agriculture. Raisin cultivation seems to be the only hope at some point. However, the land acquisition legislation and heavy taxation, ignorance, exploitative raisin traders and usurers, wealthy monasteries and local party leaders drag the poor peasants into poverty. In the same period, the railway network is inaugurated in the country, under the Trikoupi government. Their contact with the Italian workers is decisive for the spread of collective forms of struggle. The peasant uprising that inevitably follows lands some in prison and forces others to flee to wealthy America. -The character of the narrative is experiential. Giannis, one of the heroes, was the author's great-grandfather. The historical references mess with the events and persons that are hardly fictional. A deep sense of nostalgia, the richness of memory and the rhythm of the language enrich the historiographic mood of the text – which does not aspire to interpret but to simply and humanly coexist with the faces – and remain elements of the author's living tradition. - The language of the text wins over the reader with its immediacy and richness. Words of the local idiom leave the space of museum memory and become living moments within the images of the narrative. The latter, sometimes comical and sometimes melancholic, allows, with its alternations, the text to breathe and be read pleasantly. -The publication was designed and edited by the author, Christos Merantzas and Nikos Hatzopoulos. The cover is by Giorgos Koukourakis and edited by Paris Koutsikos.