An ode to the tragedy and pain as well as the beauty and wonder of contemporary life as seen through the eyes of a young female courier

The nameless protagonist and narrator of Tell Her is a young female courier who roams the busy streets of Athens delivering packages. She is constantly on the go and speaks to us through a frenetic monologue that reveals very little about herself but a lot about the many different characters she meets along the way. The people and situations she describes range from the surrealistic and absurd to the hilarious and tragic offering us a rare glimpse into contemporary urban quotidian existence.

As we find out, the heroine jots downs these stories in her notebook and occasionally shares them with her hairdresser best-friend Lena who secretly accompanies her in her delivery van every Monday. Their hilarious, tender and poignant dialogues not only offer a respite from the frenetic pace of the monologue but they also propel the plot forward. For as we come to discover the two friends are planning their most important delivery of all: the safe transportation of an urn with the ashes of a 27-year-old femicide victim to her mother and daughter on the peaks of mountain Pelion.

It is in the remote snowy village that the story reaches its heart-breaking and triumphant denouement and where we finally find out what the enigmatic phrase, ‘​Tell her I love her and I won't do it again,’ which is repeated throughout the text, really means.

Inaugural recipient of the Chowdhury Prize in Literature 2022 in the US!

Winner of the 2022 O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction, the oldest major prize for short fiction in the US!