Contemporary Greek Literature bids farewell to the century of psychoanalysis with Theodoropoulou’s novel, Game worth the candle.

George Bellistoris, a psychiatrist, narrates a «bella storia», which begins the day Emily Sanders came to his practice and flows through to the day that he stood up to his shadow.

Tracing along, the reader mingles among the Indian Yasmin Tzekadir, the Armenian Kourken Stepanian, the birdwatcher Mr. Sanders and the gambler Safarikas, who all held the candle upright for him.

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…..Until I came before that wonderful phrase that, as if by magic, had explained to me what that something was, my father’s den had become my haven.  Not so much because the smell of that room was the smell of the nape of his neck when I’d kiss him goodnight – a tin of Old Holborn tobacco still smells like the nape of his neck, to this day – or because the walls of the room were painted cod’s roe red – the color I loved – but because it was only in that room that I could ask questions and receive answers from those who, almost as if they were present, took part in my father’s afternoon conversations with his friend, Mister Alberto……