Soti Triantafillou
FOR THE LOVE OF GEOMETRY
(Patakis, 2011)
Novel (348 pages) 4th edition
Sample translation in English and French available
A hymn to rationality, geometry, rock n’ roll music and individual freedom in the face of adversity
“I am unlucky: I was born into the wrong family, in the wrong country,” says Anatoli Botsari, the unforgettable heroine of Soti Triantafillou’s novel, For the Love of Geometry. Gifted, sensitive, rebellious and preternaturally bright, Anatoli seems destined for great things. Only she isn’t. Her communist father, a cultured man who weeps over opera arias and loves animals, is in reality a tyrant who would rather hit his daughter than understand her. Her educated mother -a timid, permanently depressed woman who suffers her husband’s violence with icy silence- not only fails to provide any form of support for her daughter but is intend to silence her too. And Toy, Anatoli’s younger brother, is both helpless and unhelpful.
Covering the years between the late 1950s and mid 1990s in Athens, FOR THE LOVE OF GEOMETRY, is unique among Greek novels in that it dares to deconstruct the Greek communist party; to criticise its ‘fascist’ ideology, the great polarity that the Greek civil war brought about in Greek society, the conservatism of Greece’s educational system, and the provincial, backward attitudes that dominate Modern Greek left-wing thinking to this date. But what makes Soti Triantafillou’s book truly daring is that it manages to deliver the biggest blow to what has been forever thought as sacred in Greece: the family unit.
Soti Triantafillou intersperses her faultless prose with witty aphorisms, rock n’ roll lyrics and mathematical theories. Anatoli’s story might be sad and bitter but underneath it all there is light, strength and hope. Rationality, the clear forms of mathematics and geometry, rock n’ roll music and individual freedom, Anatoli shows us, are more than notions and ideas: they can be used as effective weapons against fanaticism, conservatism, physical and psychological violence; a means to understand, confront and bypass the grim and bitter reality of life.
Praise for FOR THE LOVE OF GEOMETRY:
“A heart-breaking book.” –Athens Voice, 2012
“A purely existential version of the mathematical novel.”–To Vima Newspaper, 2011
“The most mature and solid work of Soti Triantafillou’s to date.” –Lakis Fourouklas, 2011
Soti Triantafillou is one of Greece’s most prolific and beloved writers. Born in Athens, Greece in 1957, she studied in Paris and New York and is the author of 24 books, all of them long-sellers. Her first novel, Saturday at the Edge of Town (1997), has attained cult status and has been hailed as the most important Greek novel of its generation. Her fourth novel, The Pencil Factory (2000), has become a publishing phenomenon in Greece and has been translated into German, Spanish and Turkish. An independent political debater, Soti Triantafillou has over the years built up a considerable reputation for herself as one of Greece’s cultural icons, famous for her outspoken views and critical stance towards Greek and international politics.
