< p>The Life Story of Zogia is the story of a woman who walked steadily through the turbulent 20th century. Perhaps because she first set foot on a ship. Zogia was a refugee, she lived and died stateless, with no homeland other than the one she carried in her mind. She spent her life in a world full of foxes, and needed to have the cunning of a fox, sometimes even the foolishness of one, like Lady Magdalo who starred in her fairy tales.
She was a woman of great beauty, which was both a blessing and a misfortune for her. She left me her memories and secrets. Secrets told so they could be hidden even deeper. I now know that her story is also my story, and her secrets are my secrets as well. The Story of Zogia is also the story of many people who appear here in the background, pushed to step onto the stage, each claiming their own book.
It is the story of three women, Zennia, Zogia, and Lali, of a family that was not a typical family. It is the stories of people who meet and lose each other, only to find themselves elsewhere, in other books, in their own paradise. The "Story of Zogia" is also a small history of the 20th century. It begins in Sevastopol, the year of the Russian Revolution. It ends in Athens, after the Fall of the Wall. It is the story of different places: Crimea, Smyrna, Piraeus, and mostly Athens and its neighborhoods.
Each place, each neighborhood, is also a face of history. Above all, it is an exercise of memory. Memory with a little 'm', filled with gaps and mistakes, imperfect, full of traps. It contradicts and undermines the idealized collective memory.
