WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT
ON THE UNHAPPINESS OF BEING GREEK
A classic book … a bitter path towards self-knowledge … it examines with idiosyncratic sarcasm the subject of Modern Greek identity … a truly patriotic book. Dimou places himself at the right distance from his subject observing Greeks as they truly are. Alexandros Stergiopoulos , Eleftherotypia Newspaper
Nikos Dimou had a different kind of unhappiness in mind when he wrote
On the Unhappiness of Being Greek
back in 1975 … yet all the symptoms he described at the time contributed greatly towards Greece’s present predicament. The mentality that was developed … the national identity that was formed after the military dictatorship … we are still suffering from the same symptoms and very soon we will find ourselves just as unhappy (as we were back in 1975).
Chrystalla Chatzidimitriou , O Fileleftheros Newspaper
The 30th edition of
On the Unhappiness of Being Greek
has just come out making this classic book a legend. There couldn’t be a better time for this new edition. I grew up with this book. In fact we grew up together. I was a student when I first discovered it and now I am what they call a middle-aged man. The only difference between us is that, unlike myself, Nikos Dimou’s book of aphorisms – having gone against time and change – has remained the same.
One cause for unhappiness for us Greeks is that this book has continued to be just as current as it was when it was first published … another cause for unhappiness is the way the book was received back then … especially by certain so called experts. They didn’t see it as it really was (small bitter lessons for those who love Greece and maintain the irrational hope that somehow miraculously it will be saved) but as the exact opposite: a book that lays blame for no reason at all (all blame is unreasonable in Greece, it goes without saying). Along with those experts appeared the demagogues as well. These people never read books, they just argue about the books they never read. For all those good patriots this book was deemed to be dangerous. In the 90s … everything that went against their attitudes, which were propagated in all the controlled media, was naturally labelled as ‘dangerous’. It didn’t help that Nikos Dimou was always in a peculiar black list … because he had many flaws. First of all he was an advertising man and a successful one at that. Secondly, as his work has shown, he was never one to go with the flow of our nation’s typical ideologies. On the contrary he fought against them as much as he could. Even worse, he never barricaded himself behind a particular caste, group, union or leftish ideology group so to be able to take part in the game. He remained the sensitive man that he was, who insisted on voicing his own opinions, (which is the reason why he did not last long in most newspapers and magazines he worked for.) … I owe this man a lot and this is the least I can do to thank him for his poems, photographs, newspaper and magazine columns, the breath of fresh air he’s been in our lives for so many years now. And rather unfortunately his remains the freshest voice in today’s free presses.
So now that the banners of the fight have been ripped apart, now that the allure of the great expectations of those propagating Greekness and anything Greek has worn off, the book has reappeared. And it is indispensable to us.
On the Unhappiness of Being Greek
has now become a classic best-seller and is again in the line of duty for a reason: it is high time young Greeks learned the reasons of our unhappiness so as to make their best in the coming decades to turn this book into a funny and bitter memory of all the lost years. I am happy this book has come out again. I am truly unhappy it remains so current.
www.eyelands.gr
On the Unhappiness of Being Greek
was the title of one of Nikos Dimou’s books that had caused a stir in the years following the military
ON THE UNHAPPINESS OF BEING GREEK
A classic book … a bitter path towards self-knowledge … it examines with idiosyncratic sarcasm the subject of Modern Greek identity … a truly patriotic book. Dimou places himself at the right distance from his subject observing Greeks as they truly are. Alexandros Stergiopoulos , Eleftherotypia Newspaper
Nikos Dimou had a different kind of unhappiness in mind when he wrote
On the Unhappiness of Being Greek
back in 1975 … yet all the symptoms he described at the time contributed greatly towards Greece’s present predicament. The mentality that was developed … the national identity that was formed after the military dictatorship … we are still suffering from the same symptoms and very soon we will find ourselves just as unhappy (as we were back in 1975).
Chrystalla Chatzidimitriou , O Fileleftheros Newspaper
The 30th edition of
On the Unhappiness of Being Greek
has just come out making this classic book a legend. There couldn’t be a better time for this new edition. I grew up with this book. In fact we grew up together. I was a student when I first discovered it and now I am what they call a middle-aged man. The only difference between us is that, unlike myself, Nikos Dimou’s book of aphorisms – having gone against time and change – has remained the same.
One cause for unhappiness for us Greeks is that this book has continued to be just as current as it was when it was first published … another cause for unhappiness is the way the book was received back then … especially by certain so called experts. They didn’t see it as it really was (small bitter lessons for those who love Greece and maintain the irrational hope that somehow miraculously it will be saved) but as the exact opposite: a book that lays blame for no reason at all (all blame is unreasonable in Greece, it goes without saying). Along with those experts appeared the demagogues as well. These people never read books, they just argue about the books they never read. For all those good patriots this book was deemed to be dangerous. In the 90s … everything that went against their attitudes, which were propagated in all the controlled media, was naturally labelled as ‘dangerous’. It didn’t help that Nikos Dimou was always in a peculiar black list … because he had many flaws. First of all he was an advertising man and a successful one at that. Secondly, as his work has shown, he was never one to go with the flow of our nation’s typical ideologies. On the contrary he fought against them as much as he could. Even worse, he never barricaded himself behind a particular caste, group, union or leftish ideology group so to be able to take part in the game. He remained the sensitive man that he was, who insisted on voicing his own opinions, (which is the reason why he did not last long in most newspapers and magazines he worked for.) … I owe this man a lot and this is the least I can do to thank him for his poems, photographs, newspaper and magazine columns, the breath of fresh air he’s been in our lives for so many years now. And rather unfortunately his remains the freshest voice in today’s free presses.
So now that the banners of the fight have been ripped apart, now that the allure of the great expectations of those propagating Greekness and anything Greek has worn off, the book has reappeared. And it is indispensable to us.
On the Unhappiness of Being Greek
has now become a classic best-seller and is again in the line of duty for a reason: it is high time young Greeks learned the reasons of our unhappiness so as to make their best in the coming decades to turn this book into a funny and bitter memory of all the lost years. I am happy this book has come out again. I am truly unhappy it remains so current.
www.eyelands.gr
On the Unhappiness of Being Greek
was the title of one of Nikos Dimou’s books that had caused a stir in the years following the military
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