The Full Catastrophe: Travels Among the New Greek Ruins

The Full Catastrophe: Travels Among the New Greek Ruins

James Angelos

Language: English

Pages: 304

ISBN: 0385346484

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


A transporting, good-humored, and revealing account of Greece’s dire troubles, reported from the mountain villages, idyllic islands, and hardscrabble streets that define the country today

In recent years, small Greece, often associated with ancient philosophers and marble ruins, whitewashed villages and cerulean seas, has been at the center of a debt crisis that has sown economic and social ruin, spurred panic in international markets, and tested Europe’s decades-old project of forging a closer union.

In The Full Catastrophe, James Angelos makes sense of contrasting images of Greece, a nation both romanticized for its classical past and castigated for its dysfunctional present. With vivid character-driven narratives and engaging reporting that offers an immersive sense of place, he brings to life some of the causes of the country’s financial collapse, and examines the changes, some hopeful and others deeply worrisome, emerging in its aftermath. A small rebellion against tax authorities breaks out on a normally serene Aegean island. A mayor from a bucolic, northern Greek village is gunned down by the municipal treasurer. An aging, leftist hero of the Second World War fights to win compensation from Germany for the wartime occupation. A once marginal group of neo-Nazis rises to political prominence out of a ramshackle Athens neighborhood.

The Full Catastrophe goes beyond the transient coverage in the daily headlines to deliver an enduring and absorbing portrait of modern Greece.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

world.” Naer Mataron was just about to release a new studio album, Long Live Death, which one metal reviewer called a “wicked piece of venomous black/death,” containing insane drumming and a “brutal vomiting of assaulting vocals.” Germenis, known by his stage alias, Kaiadas, the name of the gorge into which ancient Spartans tossed executed criminals, was also about to become a parliamentarian and the party’s point person on issues pertaining to decentralization and local governance. Most of the

her usual voice: “ ‘Didn’t I see you when you came inside? I didn’t say anything, and now you’re putting that knife up to me like you’re going to slaughter me like a goat!’ “ ‘Do what I’m telling you. The money. Bring the money,’ ” she whispered, impersonating the robber. Two more hooded men came inside, she explained. One of them went to cover her head with a hood. “ ‘Go to hell!’ I said.” At this point in her narration, she started chuckling. “They pick up the mattress with me on it, and I

The prime minister had shut down a deeply flawed but nevertheless significant public news source with no clear capacity to replace it. This left Greeks to get their news from the major private television stations, largely owned by oligarchs seeking to influence the public discussion in ways amenable to their interests. The government was acting under pressure from its creditors to show it was willing to break the taboo of firing government workers. Indeed, International Monetary Fund experts

circumstances for private sector workers stirred resentment, and many Greeks favored the dismantling of public sector privileges. “It is unacceptable that private sector employees be treated as second-class citizens,” the Athens Review of Books wrote in an open letter to the Troika in 2011. “Why the difference? Because the Greek political system secured its grip on power by continuously expanding the public sector; it is thus understandably reluctant to downsize it. But enough is enough! For how

Syriza that called the attackers “thugs”; he took issue with this: “I don’t see thugs, or racists, I see retirees, old people, men and women,” and they say, “We are afraid to leave our homes, and people can’t come here to support the rights of the immigrants and not the rights of the residents.” He later added: “Is a retiree who is afraid to leave his house, who they’ve robbed three or four times, an extreme racist element? Or rather a resident who wants to disagree with the positions of the

Download sample

Download