Eroica

Winner of the 2009 Elizabeth Constantinides Memorial Translation Prize from the Modern Greek Studies Association With makeshift helmets and an old fire pump, a band of boys enacts a make-believe world of heroes and myths. But the loss of a companion and an unexpected encounter in a strange garden force the boys to confront love, death, and disillusionment, shattering their childish fantasies as they are thrust into the realities of adulthood. The most important work by one of the most important Greek novelists of the twentieth century, Kosmas Politis's Eroica is a richly textured portrayal of the end of childhood innocence and the transition to adulthood, hauntingly evoking the elusiveness of memory and a lost world of youthful ideals.