For Kostis Papayiorgis, books have been his most vital and indestructible bond with the world. Their discovery, during his late adolescence, took on the dimensions of a revelation. The teenager who was tormented by the feeling that he was "supernumerary," "a three-legged chair," "a defective spare part," or "a child of Kaida" realized that he was not alone, that he could be entirely contained in the writing of another.

Alongside his actual essays, and with his thoughtful, experiential, and playful style, Kostis Papayiorgis examined the domestic intellectual life for almost four decades (1975-2014), with critical articles and notes in both print and electronic media (To Dentro, Kritiki kai Keimena, Planodion, Athinorama, O kosmos tou Ependyti, Lifo, and others).

This volume presents for the first time an extensive selection of his writings on older and contemporary Greek literature. At the same time, it inaugurates the publishing series The Books of Others, which will host, in consecutive thematically structured volumes, a significant part of Papayiorgis's critique of the work of modern Greek thinkers, foreign prose, philosophy, and historiography.