The interpretation of neo-realistic literature is intertwined with the simultaneous examination and evaluation of the factors that contributed to the intellectual, economic, and social evolution of European countries during the second half of the 20th century. Since social and political interests were of utmost importance, literary trends emerged that highlighted the spirit of collectivity as a reaction to the disappointment of the first post-war generation (Dimitris Hatzis, Aris Alexandrou, Nikos Kasdaglis, etc.) in their quest for democratic freedoms both during the post-civil war period and in post-doctoral Greece.

The second post-war generation (Giorgos Ioannou, Thanasis Valtinos, Christoforos Milionis, Philippos Drakontaeidis, etc.) contributed to the cultivation of a new 'individuality' aimed at the active pursuit of social change through companionship, public participation, and institutional intervention. There is now a demand for the development of a mediating, transformative, and feedback-driven discourse between two levels: the personal, individual, and the socio-political. The 'opening' to the world is accomplished by the generation of the 1970s with enthusiasm and realism.

The themes of neo-realism concern the following: explosive 'I's, detachments and conflicts between individuals, dreams, enigmas, distant journeys, exiles, trap-cities (like Pandora's box), migration, melting pot, major changes, questions about individual time, individual choices, children, and death.

The 'I' gradually opens up not only to forms of collective action but also to nature: it tends to participate in the universal rhythm of life, to 'listen' to other voices, to imitate, and to develop analogical reasoning. It becomes part of new 'places.' These are the 'places' of escape, of chosen or forced exile where the 'I,' after experiencing the dissolution of local and temporal continuity and ruptures with people and spaces of suffocating urbanity and power, processes new terms-symbols for reconstructing its fragmented spatio-temporal entity, i.e., its relationship with the other world and history.

Through poetry, these terms become symbols-projections of anxiety, change, expectation, or nostalgia.

[Excerpt from the introduction of the edition]