"No one knows what tomorrow will bring... yesterday." The first traces of this Russian proverb can be found in the heart of the Stalinist era, during the Years of Great Terror. George Orwell puts it differently but equally aptly: "Who controls the past controls the future." The policing of the past is not only the most ambitious pursuit of any dictatorial/authoritarian regime but also finds its echoes in our democratic days.

Every generation of historians feels the obligation to reinterpret the past, enriching the new construction with elements that historical research has brought to light in the meantime, while also serving current political agendas. At the same time, every nation clings stubbornly to that narrative which flatters it the most and alleviates its national insecurities most effectively. If this narrative does not align with the truth, so much the worse for the truth.

Petros Tatsopoulos attempts to shuffle the deck without considering the cost or the annoyance. With texts from the period 2017-2019, where fragments of his personal memories—laced with self-deprecation—combine with impressions from readings, hearsay, and spectacles, he reconstructs the collective portrait of a society with pathologies much deeper than the current or superficially partisan ones, bringing skeletons out of the closet.

With his sharp eye and unexpected associations, he attempts to redefine Greece's position in the modern world, a country that, no matter how much it pretends to be something different or how hard it tries to hide, ultimately only manages to show what it is. To be and to appear.