The best holiday gift is a book

This holiday season, give your loved ones the most beautiful gift, a book. Reading helps us relax, learn, travel and change the way we see the world.

1. The hare with the amber eyes

Edmund de Waal
Translation: Tilla Balli

A World Literature novel that takes you on a journey.

With the purpose and cause of the search for the hands that once held the 264 netske sculptures, de Waal takes us on a journey to Paris at the end of the 19th century, to Vienna at the beginning of the next, to Japan of yesterday and today, to a Europe that is nevertheless extremely troubled charming, from an artistic point of view at least. These small objects bear witness to a world full of luxury and carefreeness, but also to a world experiencing hatred and pogroms.

Through the amber eyes of the hare we know a whole mesh of lives, a family, an ethnic group – the Jews – but also a world that is swept away by the maelstrom of wars and the worship of art, balances between the old and the new, peeks inside in the buildings and in the correspondence, he meets Degas, Rilke, Proust, emperors and bankers, the common people who are in pain and excited almost at the same time…

This book is above all a wandering, a journey into the microcosm of things that carry incredible power within them and are able to change everything.

He was awarded the 2010 Costan Prize in the biography category.

Gema Publications

​2. The Greek Civil War. Memories of war and contemporary political identities

Raymond Albanos

A book that takes you back in time.

Why is History useful? What happened during the 1940s and why did the two opposing political factions of the Civil War escalate their confrontation into armed and bloody conflict? How did they make sense of the reality at the time and how did they perceive their opponents? How does the Civil War affect us and others around us today?

This book is a journey through a difficult past for which there are conflicting memories that correspond to conflicting identities. It is an attempt to narrate in a simple way both the main events (which there is no doubt on either side that they took place) and the different interpretations of them. At the same time it is an invitation to reflect, introspect and critically analyze the certainties and images we have about ourselves and others.

Epicenter Publications

3. In the darkest corner

Elizabeth Haynes
Translation: Alexandros Chondros

A gripping novel full of suspense, an extremely convincing portrayal of obsession.

Kathryn had enjoyed the bachelor life long enough to know it was time to stop being single when she first laid eyes on him. Handsome, charismatic and spontaneous, Lee seems too good to be true. And her friends completely agree, as each in turn falls victim to his charm.
Lee’s erratic behavior and control over Catherine make her feel increasingly isolated. Driven to the darkest corner of her world, she trusts no one, meticulously plans her escape. Four years later, and struggling to overcome her demons, Katherine dares to think that she might be safe and nothing can harm her. Until one phone call changes everything.

Into the Darkest Corner was on the New York Times bestseller list for several months, and in 2011 it won the Book of the Year award as well as the Rising Star Award from Amazon. UK.

Gema Publications

4. The Life of the Mind. Volume I: Thought

Hannah Arendt

Foreword – Translation: Dimitris K. Psychogios

The Life of the Mind. Volume II: Will

Hannah Arendt

Foreword – Translation: Dimitris K. Psychogios

The classic work on how and what we think and want

The Life of the Mind, consisting of two volumes dealing with Thought and Will, is Hannah Arendt’s last and perhaps greatest work. Shifting her interest from the world of political action, the Vita Activa, with which she had been creatively engaged, she penetrates deeply into mental processes, the Vita Contemplativa. It is a thorough and provocative analysis of the human mind through a critical approach to the work of the great philosophers, from the Presocratics to the moderns. Hannah Arendt’s swan song, a generous philosophical legacy for today’s and future generations.

Epicenter Publications

5. Her work and toil – From my life

Evangelos A. Papastratos

The autobiography of Evangelos A. Papastratos, one of the best known and most important Greek businessmen.

In simple and understandable language, it tells how a twelve-year-old who started as a “barker” in Panagopoulos’ shop in Agrinio came to have a significant international presence in the tobacco markets, creating tobacco factories in Athens, Germany and Egypt. In December he found himself, forced to stay in his apartment and in complete inactivity and, looking back on his life, he wanted to record his personal memories, the events and the efforts he made to realize his dreams and ambitions.

Reading the book, one immediately realizes that the path of Evangelos Papastratos can be an example and a source of optimism and inspiration for young people.

Part of the proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to the Special Vocational Training and Rehabilitation Workshop for young people with mental retardation “Panagia Eleousa” in Agrinio.

Gema Publications

6. The Coming Disorder

Kostas Stoupas

The five traps that threaten democracies and the prosperity of the West.

What is the relationship between rain and democracy and the industrial revolution and women’s emancipation and gay marriage?
Why did James Watt contribute more than Karl Marx to the abolition of slavery and soon the exploitation of man by man?
What does the debt trap have to do with Skinner’s trap and the Thucydides trap with the biology trap and humanism?
Why is Calcoin more likely to prevail than Bitcoin and where in the cycle of disorder are we?
Kondratieff, Kardashev, Margaret Atwood or H.J. Have Wales come up with the best case scenario for where the world is going?
What do the repeated records of the S&P 500 and the price of gold foretell?

Are the societies of the “butter” people and the “daffodils” of the West able to understand what is being played?
If they understand this, they can afford to sacrifice some of the comforts and prosperity with loans in order to reinvent the explosive dynamics of competition, the free market and the open democratic society, without the identity hysteria of (otherwise respectable) individual minorities. Are we able to reboot capitalism? This is the biggest challenge of the coming period of disorder.

Epicenter Publications