Crowds of people in the field of letters, the arts, politics, church and business were gathered a few days ago in the main hall of the Benaki Museum on Koumbari Street to watch the particularly warm and moving presentation of his historical novel Vassilis X. Spiliotopoulos, “Smuggle of a Life”.

The whole event was curated by Mrs Liana Tsobanoglou of the Benaki Museumwith the valuable contribution of Mrs Georgia Giannakoulia of the publishing house “KAPA Publisher”. Prior to the launch of the presentation, images of the last years of the 19th century were displayed on screen. and the beginning of the 20th as the Russian Revolution, with the aim of introducing those present in the spirit of the book.

The work of Vasilis X. Spiliotopoulos, as a historical novel, covers historical developments in the Russian Empire from 1881 until the explosion of World War I and the Russian Revolution. The whole thing, for the most part, describes historical events and is the result of many years of research.

At the start of the event, he spoke The Vice President of the Friends of Children with Cancer “ELPIDA”in which the author offers most of the revenue from book sales, Nouli Manolis. Ms Manolis referred to the flagship work of the founder of the Fountain of the Fountain Marianna Vardinoyannis and thanked the writer’s warmest words, who has also been infected with three primary cancers.

Immediately after the speech, the presentation coordinator, a journalist of the newspaper “KATHIMERINI”, Xenia Kounalakis, who, among other things, said: “I like that the writer dares the great, massive novel, full of dramatic twists and infiltrating human descriptions, at a time when we are all in constant digital ADHD, we read fragments of texts on the mobile and we have complete weakness. So a man who has been confronted with the stress of limited time, because of his illness, takes us by the hand with this book and tells us to calm down, to relax, to close our cellphone in a distant spot, to touch the 900 -page book on our feet. To sink in reading, as we did small with Russian fairy tales and Michael Strokov and Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, because, since we did it earlier that we were smaller and more immature, we can do it now. “

As he noted, the most important thing the author gives us with this book is a moving life lesson. Because we healthy ones, who have all the freedom and independence of the world, as the author says, learn from Basil that The disease, especially cancer, a word taboo until recently, is not equivalent to capitulation, but it can be done with stubbornness, perseverance and patience of inspiration, creation and, therefore, life. That is, it shows us how to learn to make the fear of life the fear of death, as the Empiricist says. “

Athens MP, Pavlos Geroulanostouched the audience with an apt and moving speech. As he pointed out, “Whether the writer describes a Hall of Palace of the Russian aristocracy or the graceful shot on a horse -drawn horse, makes you live the experience in all its dimensions. And the striking thing is that he does it in a few words. So, the story of the Russian Revolution by Basil does not develop either as a film by Theodore Angelopoulos or even as “Anna Karenina” to fill Vasilis the thousand pages. Where he chooses to shed light, he makes it so complete that he completes the image of the events he chooses not to describe. And, therefore, when it deals with such a complex story, it makes it extremely effective so that it does not sink you into meaningless aspects of the subject simply to show you that it knows them. “

‘It’s hard’continue, “convince a man who appreciates every second of life, that you are honestly willing to understand why, when you consider every second. Be careful what he writes: ” There are times when the creation no longer withstands the burden of human hypocrisy and sahlamara, no matter how much they are labeled in the overlays of greatness.

It is immeasurable how a person is enough to enjoy stupid fruits. How much I would like to live moments of robustness again, when energy was overflowing with each cell, I thought, letting the body resting on a stump ” ‘. That’s why Paul Geroulan concluded, “When you close the book, you want to reopen it right away.”

Then The Head of the Historical Archives of the Benaki Museum, historian Tasos Sakellaropoulos He referred to the painful research of the author and the difficulty of the whole project. In fact, he underlined the sloth of the elite of the Russian Empire and rejected the situation with the current fluid setting at that time. His speech had all the integrity of his subject, but with particular emphasis on the extremely painful conditions under which the author worked as a patient.

End, The painter and professor at the NTUA Architecture School, former MP Dimitris Sevastakisstressed that “Vassilis Spiliotopoulos rests narratively in history not to ‘assign’ her the dramatic fictional development of his literary text, but because he claims time. The historical range thus becomes the personal, his own time. “

The presentation was closed by the author himself, who, after thanking all those who represented him in the long process of writing and publishing his book, made a special mention to Tatiana Damagiotis and Natalia Katiphoris, who helped communicate his work.

Noted, in fact, characteristically that “He owes a big thank you to the great protagonists of his life, his doctors and nurses, who gave him another opportunity for an encouraging present.” As he said, the truth is that the novel wrote it, but it also shaped it.

‘This book’ended, “It is a voice against human arrogance, a recording of my repulsion in all kinds of dogmatism, ideological, political and religious, a search for the truth of the outside world that emerges through the fight against the demons of everyone and the finding of my inner truth and my life.”