Stavros Zoumboulakis remembers the summers of his childhood in the village of Sykiá in Laconia. Here, there is no space for sentimental nostalgia, but rather an unprejudiced, albeit not without a sense of understanding and tenderness, gaze upon a harsh world, the Greek countryside of the 1960s. Literary writing, autobiographical introspection, psychological testimony, and reflection intertwine in an inextricable and captivating way.

I find nothing more boring than listening to or reading about someone’s childhood, you truly have to love them a lot to bear it. I had no desire to recount my own childhood here, just enough to capture the imprint of this age-old, recently lost, yet permanently submerged world. This world deeply moves me, not because it is the world of my childhood – it was not exclusively so – but because it is the world of my beloved people, those who loved me and whom I loved deeply. I always think of it with emotion, but I do not long for it. There is emotion without nostalgia, and perhaps that makes it more profound. St. Z.

Stavros Zoumboulakis was born in 1953 in Sykiá, Laconia. He studied law and philology in Athens and philosophy in Paris. He served for many years in Secondary Education. From 1998 to 2012, he was the director of the magazine Nέα Εστία. Since 2008, he has been the president of the Board of Directors of the Biblical Foundation “Bread of Life” and, since 2013, of the Supervisory Board of the National Library of Greece. In 2015, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Department of Philosophy, Pedagogy, and Psychology of the University of Ioannina.

In 2017, he was honored with the state prize for essay-criticism for his book Under the Light of the Novel (2015) and with the Award of the Academy of Athens – Petros Charis Foundation for his book The Sigh of the Poor. Essays on Papadiamantis (2016).