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Books about memory

A photograph you can step back into, a drawer of poems their author chose not to publish, a lake remembered from when you were fourteen: these books treat memory as something you can walk around inside rather than simply recall. In «Το μαγικό φωτογραφείο του κύριου Χιρασάκα» a photographer's studio offers a way back to moments you thought were gone, and Cavafy's «Ανέκδοτα» gathers the poems he kept out of print, where lost youth and old history sit side by side. Come to them if you like the past handled with warmth and a little strangeness, and if you'd rather be shown a remembered room than told what to feel about it.

A page that shows it

When a familiar face slips beyond the reach of memory.

Αλήθεια, όμως, ποιος ήταν αυτός ο άνθρωπος; Μέχρι τώρα, ακόμα κι όταν τη χαιρετούσε αναπάντεχα κάποιος στον δρόμο, αμέσως τον αναγνώριζε λέγοντας: «Είσαι ο τάδε, σωστά;» – γεγονός που πάντα χαροποιούσε τον άλλον. Πίστευε πως ήταν πραγματικά άσχημο να γερνάς και να σκουριάζει το μυαλό σου. «Καλώς ήρθατε. Σας περίμενα» της είπε ο άντρας.
Excerpt from Το μαγικό φωτογραφείο του κύριου Χιρασάκα, Χιιραγκι Σανακα, Ικαρος 2020. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals

  11. The Giver

    Lois Lowry, 1993

    A boy in a perfectly ordered community is chosen to hold its memories—and discovers what that order costs.

  12. Συλλογές

    Κωστής Παλαμάς, 1886

    The great popular poet of modern Greece: ballads, island legends and small elegies, in the language people actually spoke. Look for the human gesture inside the folk song. At his best there is no one warmer and more exact about the things he loved. Still, some verse is more pastiche than lived experience, but the ambition is real. But the book has real ballads and real feeling, and a warm, generous voice, and Palamaς is a key figure in Greek letters. Read him as a poet who came from the folk tradition. Read him for the ballads and the small elegies. In the end, you get a sense of the poet's world and a few lines to underline. That is the honest case for this book,

  14. It

    Stephen King, 1986

    A Maine town, a childhood summer, and the shape-shifting thing that hunts its children — a horror novel about memory as much as monsters.

  15. Short Fiction

    Mary Shelley, 1829

    Mary Shelley's short stories: revenge, shipwrecks, immortals and social climbers—gothic invention in miniature, with the same fierce eye for guilt and longing as Frankenstein.

A taste of the feed

  1. At night, things without names walk through your room.

    Την νύκτα, Δέσποτα Χριστέ μου, τον νου και την ψυχή μου φύλαττέ μου σαν γύρω μου αρχινούν και περπατούνε Όντα και Πράγματα που όνομα δεν έχουν και τ’ άσαρκα ποδάρια των στην κάμαρή μου τρέχουν και κάμνουν στο κρεβάτι μου κύκλο για να με διούνε — και με κοιτάζουν σαν να με γνωρίζουν σαν να καγχάζουν άφωνα που τώρα με φοβίζουν.

    Ανέκδοτα · Κωνσταντίνος Καβάφης

  2. An enemy spilled thirty barrels of wine, and the old man has forgiven him.

    Καὶ ἤρχισε νὰ διηγῆται πῶς ἄγνωστος ἐχθρός, ἴσως κανένας βαλμένος ἀπ᾽ τοὺς δικούς του, ποὺ δὲν τὰ εἶχε καλὰ μαζί τους, εἶχεν εἰσχωρήσει διὰ νυκτὸς ὁ ἀπόκοτος εἰς τὴν αὐλὴν καὶ εἰς τὸ ἰσόγειον τῆς οἰκίας καὶ εἶχεν ἀνοίξει τὸν κρουνὸν τοῦ μεγάλου βαγενίου του κ᾽ ἐχύθηκαν τριάντα βαρέλες κρασί. Τώρα τοῦ ἔμενε μόνον αὐτὸ τὸ μεσακὸ βαρελάκι ποὺ τὸ κρασοπουλεῖ κι ἄλλα δύο ἢ τρία μικρότερα, τὰ ὁποῖα εὑρίσκει ἡδονὴν νὰ λιανοπωλῇ μοναχός του, ὄχι τόσον διὰ τὰ λεπτὰ ποὺ θὰ μαζώξῃ, ὅσον διότι ἔρχονται, ἂς εἶναι καλά, τὰ παιδιὰ τοῦ χωριοῦ, τὰ λεβεντόπαιδα, καὶ τοῦ κάνουν συντροφιά, γιὰ νὰ περνᾷ κι αὐτὸς τὴν ὥραν του.

    Τρελλὴ βραδυά · Αλέξανδρος Παπαδιαμάντης

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