Four Walls

by Vangelis Hatziyannidis

Overview

“The bees flew away to an island in order to pollinate the most brilliant idea we have read in a Greek book in years.”—Vitrine magazine

Following the death of his beekeeper father, P Rodakis lives a solitary life in the old family house on a Greek island. He takes in a young fugitive woman and her daughter. Thanks to his father’s secret recipe, they produce delicious honey that becomes highly sought after. P Rodakis is captured and imprisoned by a jealous monk who wants the power of the honey for himself. Rosa goes in search of her real father and incest and imprisonment become the themes explored in this powerful novel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780714531229
Publisher:	Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd
Publication date:	06/01/2006
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Vangelis Hatziyannidis was an well known Greek actor until a virus confined him to a wheelchair and he turned his career to writing.

Editorial Reviews

Themes of isolation and imprisonment dominate Hatziyannidis's enjoyable and peculiar debut novel. Set in a remote village on one of the Greek islands, the novel centers on Rodakis, a 25-year-old "essentially unemployed" and "irascible" loner who takes in Vaya, a woman on the run who carries a suspicious amount of luggage with her, at the urging of the village priest. Vaya and Rodakis slowly learn to trust one another, and Rodakis learns that Vaya has been hiding her infant daughter, Rosa, in one of her trunks. The three form an odd family, although, refreshingly, Rodakis and Vaya do not immediately develop a romantic relationship. While the early chapters are weakened by the stilted translation and a series of confusing flashbacks and flash forwards, Hatziyannidis's narrative hits its stride once Vaya encourages Rodakis to take up his dead father's bee-keeping business. Their recipe for honey draws unwanted attention from across the island and abroad, shattering their cloistered lives; everyone, it seems, wants the recipe, though none as badly as a group of monks who kidnap Rodakis and imprison him in a cave for years. It's a credit to Hatziyannidis that he pulls off a plausibly happy ending. (Sept. 18) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Captain Corelli's Mandolin goes gothic. On an unnamed Greek island in some soft-focus past, the Rodakis family produced honey and an eccentric son who lives alone in a remote house. When a woman fleeing domestic abuse lands on the island, the village priest asks Rodakis to give her refuge. He doesn't know she has a baby (alive) in her trunk. When discovered, the child draws her mother, Vaya, and Rodakis together. But this offbeat love story, told in old-fashioned abstractions (which may not have translated well), turns into a 19th-century gothic tale when Rodakis and Vaya create a kind of honey product called "Angelico," so sublime that it fetches huge profits. Strange things begin to occur. Vaya is killed by lightning. The abbot of a nearby monastery and a foreign tourist each want the secret formula for Angelico. When the evil abbot, with the assistance of all his monks, secretly imprisons Rodakis, his adopted daughter (and sexual partner) is forced to leave the island. Predictably, there is a rescue and a reunification. Initially charming in its slow-motion evocation of Greek rural life and the peculiarities opened up by isolation, it all becomes claustrophobic with heavy-handed plotting.

Kirkus Reviews