Between Piraeus and Naples

This is a collection of seven short stories for adults and five short stories for children by George Vizyenos, a largely forgotten 19th-century intellectual often credited as being the progenitor of the Greek short story as well as the writer who established literary realism in Greek fiction. In all his stories, Vizyenos introduces an element of mystery, they are tales of the unexpected and at the end of each one, both the narrator and the reader find they are in possession of some knowledge which causes them to review their first impressions. All of the stories are partly autobiographical and combine many of Vizeynos, own experiences both as a child and as an adult and they also draw on his studies of psychology and the effect of traumatic experiences and events. His protagonists, who in many cases are trying to shed the burden of a trauma in their lives by narrating their story often find that this only multiplies the ambiguities in their lives that this catharsis is trying to expel. Between 1830-1870 narrative fiction was dominated by romantic historical fiction and it was not until 1880 that literary realism came to the fore and the writing of short stories were more popular than novels. Vizyenos is probably the best known of these writers of the new genre. He was also the first to write about Turks (the archenemies of the Greeks) in a new light and is probably the only writer of Greek fiction to portray Turks with any sort of compassion. His uniqueness of style of storytelling, drawing on his own experiences combined with those of psychology make his stories totally absorbing and as mysteries they stand well to be read today.