June Reading Club: Between Friends - Εικόνα

The SNFCC Reading Club, coordinated by Giannis Palavos, continues in June.

On Tuesday, June 22, bibliophiles renew their monthly appointment, to discuss the book they read during the month that just passed. The group of readers will once again have the opportunity to come together and use the book of the month as a starting point to share experiences, emotions and ideas, as well as to create new friendships and exchange opinions.

June Book of the Month: Amos Oz, Between Friends 

He was one of the greatest Israeli intellectuals of the twentieth century, and a prolific author, who produced more than 40 books – novels, novellas, short story collections, essays, and children’s stories – which have been translated into 45 languages. As a journalist, he published hundreds of articles, in which he lucidly expressed his left-wing ideologies and pacifist views on the Palestine issue, openly advocating for the creation of an independent state. Amos Oz (1939-2018) is Israel’s most highly acclaimed author, having received dozens of national and international distinctions and peace prizes, as well as several nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature. 

Born Amos Klausner to immigrant parents from Eastern Europe in Jerusalem, the multi-award-winning Israeli author was brought up by his struggling family until age 15. Losing his mother as a teenager was a landmark event that marked him for life. After her death, he joined Kibbutz Hulda, where he remained until age 47. It was there that he adopted the surname Oz, which means “courage” in Hebrew. He studied philosophy and philology at the university of his birth town, and later became a university tutor himself; he also took part in the Six-Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973). He became established on the literary scene with his novel My Michael, which was published in 1966. Among his most notable works are: Black Box, To Know a Woman, Fima, Don’t Call It Night, The Same Sea, and A Tale of Love and Darkness. 

A master storyteller with a rich use of language, Amos Oz often draws inspiration from personal experience and familiar places from his youth. Through a filter of both realism and profound humanism, he focuses his attention on exploring the inner world of his characters and the complexity of human relationships, as well as on understanding Otherness through writing. 

In his wonderful short story collection Between Friends, Oz introduces eight stories, set in the fictitious Kibbutz Yekhat, where his characters, everyday people, strive to reconcile reality with dreams, and the collective “should” with their personal “wants”. As Oz wrote: “To me, the years I spent living at the kibbutz were the best university to study human nature. What I learned about people there, I don’t think I could have learned if I’d spent one hundred and fifty years in a major city. When you live in a kibbutz, you see genetics in action, one generation after another. Certainly, the price was that the others knew everything about me, as well. But I didn’t mind that. I was happy to be learning the secrets of humankind”.  

Giannis Palavos was born in Velvento, Kozani, in 1980. He studied Journalism at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and Arts Administration at the Panteion University in Athens. He has written the short story collections True love and other stories (Intro Books 2007), Joke (Nefeli 2012), which received the State Literary Award for Best Short Story, and the Short Story Prize of the online literary journal O Anagnostis, and The child (Nefeli, 2019). Working together with Tasos Zafeiriadis, he wrote the script for the graphic novels The Corpse (Jemma Press 2011) and Gra-Grou (Ikaros 2017), illustrated by Thanasis Petrou; Gra-Grou received the prize for Best Comic and Best Script at the Greek Comics Awards. He also edited the republication of Athanasios Gravalis’ short stories Broken Columns (1930), as part of the “Prose Tradition” series by Nefeli Publishing (2019), and translated works by Tobias Wolff, Alden Nowlan, Breece D'J Pancake, Wallace Stegner, Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, etc. 

Tuesday 22/06, 18.30-20.30

MEDITERRANEAN GARDEN

For adults
Participation by online pre-registration

Pre-registration starts on Friday 04/06 at 12.00

Coordinator: Giannis Palavos, author

To take part in the Reading Club, registered participants are required to have read the book of the month. 

 

The use of face mask and social distancing measures are mandatory in indoor and outdoor areas of the SNFCC, in accordance with Hellenic National Public Health Organization regulations.

Due to public health measures, there may be changes regarding either the staging of the event, or the maximum number of participants.

See also

Saturday 19/06, 18:30

Reading Club: Children’s Literature | Mary Poppins

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Sunday 27/06, 19:00

Reading Club: Teenage Literature | The One and Only Ivan

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