Facing Athens : Encounters with the Modern City

Rating:
Summary: Clear Mind, Open Heart
Review: In prose that is as graceful as it is powerful, this book tells a gripping story of Athens. Anyone who is in touch with Greek culture -- new developments in art, literature, and film -- will find familiar themes: The shock from the new immigrants, the polarization of the city into affluent suburbs and a decaying center, and the struggle of so many people to make a living. But in this book, the stuff of everyday life is narrated with a rare eloquence and sensitivity. I loved this book because it enriched my understanding of a city I treasure.

Rating:
Summary: Absolute Waste of Money!!
Review: This book is has little to nothing to do with the city of Athens. It's a complete waste of money!




Rating:
Summary: Unvarnished and Necessary
Review: This slim book is most definitely not a travel guide to Athens, and anyone treating it as such is bound to be disappointed. Nor is it a comprehensive impartial journalistic assessment of the city complete with bibliography and footnotes. And unlike all too many books on European cities such as London, Paris, Prague, Venice, etc, it is not a "celebration" of Athens aimed at armchair travelers looking for insights into customs and culture. Rather, it is one man's attempt to return to the city of his not-so-distant youth and take its pulse in an attempt to understand the changes that have taken place over the last two or three decades. In that sense, it is a very reflective and personal book--more of a memoir--and yet one that will reward the reader looking for a more intimate portrait of Athens than is typically found in bookstores or travel magazines.

Sarrinikolaou spent the first ten years of his life in Athens before his family relocated to New York. For this book, he returned to wander the streets of his birthplace, living in a rented apartment and tagging along with distant cousins and friends and friends to social events. The dominant themes are ones that are central (though hardly exclusive) to modern Greece: urban sprawl, suburban flight, immigration, and class. Some may find these themes "depressing" or "negative", however to ignore them is to ignore the primary challenges facing the city.

Sarrinikolaou discusses how the city's wealthy have mostly migrated to suburbs where larger homes can be built, abandoning the center of the city, which is in turn repopulated with immigrants eager to take advantage of the decaying cheap housing. This runs counter to the widely popular notion that immigrants are "invading" neighborhoods and somehow pushing out longtime residents (as if they had the economic clout to do so). In one neighborhood, he encounters a small group of man apparently acting as self-appointed sentries, not allowing Albanians to pass through. Albanians are key players in the story of modern Athens, and function in much the same way as Mexicans do in the United States. After enduring the bizarre and brutal totalitarian regime of Enver Hoxha during the Cold War, large numbers fled to Greece and Italy after the collapse of communism and now form a cheap labor pool for the bottom of the service sector. (The illegal immigration pipeline from Albania is the basis of the plot in Petros Markaris's plodding crime novel Deadline in Athens.) Here, Sarrinikolaou isn't afraid to call Greece's "traditional xenophobia" what it is: racism.

Indeed, nothing is off-limits, as he deals with the sacred cow of religion. Attending services at different Greek Orthodox churches, he notices that he is generally the youngest attendee (he's in his early 30s), and questions to what extent the services are empty recitations of comforting rituals, as opposed to true celebrations of faith. The national health care system is held to the light and found wanting when his grandfather is taken ill and doctors must be bribed to complete the life-saving operation (in theory, health-care is available to all citizens for free in Greece). Other targets include conspicuous consumption, the role of money in sexual relations, a nice little bit about soccer, and, of course, the corruption which is utterly pervasive. There's a certain element of airing dirty laundry going on, but one gets a Nixon-going-to-China sense that only a Greek could have written this book. Written in a deeply personal style, it's unlikely to have as much resonance with anyone who hasn't been to Athens, but it's required reading for anyone interested in the city that lies under the Parthenon.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful and Important
Review: To dismiss this powerful and beautifully written book as too critical or negative is to avert one's eyes from children sleeping on the ground, patients at the mercy of corrupt doctors, and immigrants facing exploitation and discrimination. If readers care about human suffering, or if they simply love Greece, they can't but appreciate the moving story that Sarrinikolaou tells. If we dismiss such stories because they're too troubling to us, or because such problems also exist elsewhere, we dismiss the city itself, failing to look at it carefully and to engage it seriously.

Rating:
Summary: Groundbreaking
Review: Writing about Greece tends to focus on the glorious past, or on tame subjects such as food, the beautiful landscape, and village life. But here is a book that The New York Times rightly called "important" for taking on the difficult subjects of immigration, class, and corruption. Sarrinikolaou shows courage in pointing to the pressures on ordinary Athenians, but he also displays a great deal of compassion. The problems he sees clearly pain him. And he is careful not to stereotype or generalize, making it clear that this is his story of Athens. Moreover, there is a personal and moving subtext in this book that deals with the author's childhood experiences with poverty and domestic violence. So whatever your interest in Athens is, know that this book is beautifully written and that it delves into subjects that touch people's lives in every part of the world.