Anyone who was excited by the recent Manual of Stupidity by Dionysis Charitopoulos, a book of original aphorisms that for many months after its publication, will enjoy some texts that illustratively portray all of modern Greek madness with the author's disarming style. From zeibekiko and Kazantzidis to the Stock Exchange and television, from the itch of feng shui and westerns to unemployment and football, Charitopoulos does not spare anyone or anything.

With abyssal, often dark humor and a proven ability to distinguish the wheat from the chaff, the author mercilessly parodies modern life. A book with an essayistic discourse that reads like a novel of contemporary Greece. Aphorisms, like those contained in the pages of the Manual of Stupidity, are also found here.

Here are some:

• The zeibekiko is like the 'Our Father'. You’ve said everything at once.
• The mechanisms of dumbing down always precede the mechanisms of consumption.
• A career is the modern valley of tears.
• The Greeks listened to Theodorakis and Hatzidakis, but sang Kazantzidis.

But the book draws its greatest interest from the texts themselves. Here are some indicative examples:

1 (On the Left): Today the Left is fading into the margins. Only a few remain; the many have fled. It is understandable. The Left means selflessness; a word that is close to being exiled from dictionaries, let alone from people's lives.

2 (On football): There is no fan who buys a ticket. We are all supporters. No one goes to the stadium with a cold eye. A match without passion cannot happen.

3 (On unemployment): Of all the vices that a man can carry, nothing is more unbearable than returning home empty-handed. The man's defeat is overwhelming. Prolonged unemployment severely injures his psyche.