The Cases II is the second collected volume of essays in Kathimerini by Pantelis Boukalas (the first was published by Agra Editions in 2001). P. Boukalas notes: Greece, as a place and as a world, is a rich written tapestry, even if at times we hastily reduce it out of laziness or arrogance, out of selfishness or because we unjustly identify it with the few who govern it from their institutional or even extra-institutional posts. Let us love it therefore for what it truly is, humble yet beautiful and precious, and not for what our delirious (and usually implanted) illusions claim it to be, such as the 'navel of the world' or any other grandiose notion. And when we judge it, let us not forget that we must primarily judge ourselves and not absolve ourselves.

It would be most honest for our criticism to be guided by the rigor of love and its justice, rather than the snobbish logic of those who launch the dismissive verdict 'you live in Greece, what do you expect?' or its equivalent, 'this is Greece...'. Some aspects of this rich writing were attempted to be approached by the approximately one hundred twenty essays in the volume, first published in Kathimerini from January 2001 to December 2005, in the Sunday column 'Cases': Greece of Olympic frenzy, of television excess, of ancient and modern myths, of hierarchical triviality, of party demagoguery, of racist anxiety and the lamentation ('we are dying, our language is dying, our identity is lost', etc.), Greece in a neighborhood of the world afflicted by wars, but also Greece with its strategies that taunt time, with the inventive populace of its children and its poets, from Sappho to the folk singer and from there to Solomos, Palamas, Kavafis, Elytis.

[Excerpt from the publisher's or edition's presentation text]