Another life to live
Another life to live —Mia zoi akoma, by its original title in modern Greek - is an autobiographical, essay and narrative book written by the Swedish author of Hellenic descent Theodor Kallifatides. The work was published in Spanish by the Galaxia Gutenberg publishing house in 2019, with the translation by Selma Ancira. After its release, Kallifatides' text has generated very positive reviews, especially due to the themes it addresses and the author's sensitivity.
Another life to live It is an intimate work, a conversation between the writer, his past, his present and his future, where the reader becomes a spy and confidant. At the same time, this is a book that every writer can enjoy, because it talks about the craft of letters, and everything that comes with it, such as creative blocks, the need to express ideas through words and that kind of love that marks the permanence in art.
Synopsis of Another life to live
A travel in the time
A very dear friend of Theodor Kallifatides told him that it was not a good idea to write a book after your seventies.. That thought was on his mind, because he realized that he was getting old, that he couldn't write like he used to—even though he longed for it more than many other things—that he didn't feel as Swedish as before, and he needed, somehow, return to his roots, to those who saw him grow: his native Greece.
That was how the author kept his hopes in the suitcase and got rid of everything else. He sold what could be sold (even his comfortable studio in Stockholm, a place to which he was so accustomed and where he had spent long hours doing what he loved), and he left for himself, to find himself, although he had left a part of himself in Sweden.
The reason to leave everything
the people who leave, by obligation or because they are exiled, are haunted by the feeling that they don't belong anywhere. At the same time, they are impregnated with everything that surrounds them and interacts with them.
En este sentido, the immigrant suddenly becomes a kind of Frankenstein, made from places, the emotions, the people and the experiences that your new “home” can offer you.
However, he continues to be fragmented, because he is an expatriate, a being that does not end up being one thing, but neither is it another. Another life to live speaks, in principle, of this feeling. However, also about what it is like to return home after a long time, which, in turn, is like emigrating again. And it is that, in the end, one ends up being transformed into his new home, although not completely.
In that context, what would be the reason to drop everything and go through so much trouble? In the case of Theodor Kallifatides, the causes of his banishment were political.
The reason for the return
If the reason for leaving your first home was political, the reasons for returning were linked to what he considered a creative debacle. The author had stalled. He felt that he no longer had the spark to tell new stories; however, he needed to count them.
Theodor Kallifatides thought that: “Emigration had not made me a writer; he was convinced that also in Greece he would have written, for the simple reason that it had no other way of existing in the eyes of others, nor in mine”.
So, with this need to return to letters once more, he returned to Greece, and, for the first time in his career, wrote a book in Greek. Still, this didn't turn out to be like her previous novels. Another life to live It is a book about literature, but also about life and death, about the Vietnam War (or its consequences for the Swedes and the Greeks), about foreign policy, love, family and democracy.
It all starts with a story
Another life to live It is situated in the present in which the author wrote the book. The story begins when Theodor Kallifatides was at an event designated to honor his bibliography. In it, he tells the anecdotes that happened to him when, because of the war, he had to leave his house. Over time, he adapted until his host country became his new nation.
Likewise, Kallifatides narrates the childhood he lived in Greece, a place that became a training center for many soldiers who then went to battle. It was there, in that place surrounded by hostility, where he found his vocation: writing. While he is given the task of recalling key moments in his life, the author goes back and forth, through a simple, yet profound rhythm.
In the end, Another life to live It is summed up to the internal journey of a person, a human being who never forgot where he comes from. Although he allowed himself to be colored by the new horizons to return, later, to the land where he was born.
About the author, Theodor Kallifatides
Theodor Kallifatides
Theodor Kallifatides was born in 1938, in Molaoi, Greece. Kallifatides was always accustomed to travel. In his youth, he and his parents moved to the city of Athens. many later, emigrated to sweden to look for work. Thanks to his ability with languages, he adapted very quickly to the language of his new country., which made it easier for him to resume his studies, which he did at Stockholm University. Later he obtained a degree in philosophy.
Later he worked as a teacher at his alma mater. In 1969 he began his career as an author with his first poems. However, It was his fiction that catapulted him as one of the best-known Swedish authors in the West.
Theodor Kallifatides has written about travel and theater, as well as having created several film scripts and directed a film himself. Throughout his life he has been awarded several awards. The most recent was the Dobloug Prize (2017).
Other books by Theodor Kallifatides
Poetry
- minnet i exile: dikter (1969);
- Tiden är inte oskyldig: dikter (1971)
detective trilogy Kristina Vendel
- ett enkelt brott (2000);
- Den sjätte passageraren (2002);
- i hennes blick (2004);
independent works
- utlänningar (1970);
- bonder with shoeing (1973);
- Plogen och svärdet (1975);
- Den sena hemkomsten. Skisser Fran Grekland (1976);
- The love (1978);
- Mitt Aten (1978);
- in fallen angel (1981);
- Brännvin och rosar (1983);
- Människor, skolböcker, minnen (1986);
- lustarnas herre (1986);
- In lång dag i Athen (1989);
- Sidospar (1991);
- See var Gabriella Orlova? (1992);
- Cypern: en resa till den heligaön (1992);
- Ett liv bland människor (1994);
- svenska texter (1994);
- Detect sista ljuset (1995);
- Aphrodites tarar: om gamla gudar och eviga människor (1996);
- From sju timmarna i paradise (1998);
- För en kvinnas röst: en kärleksdikt (1999);
- Ett nytt land utanför mitt fönster (2001);
- In kvinna att älska (2003);
- Heracles (2006);
- Modrar och soner (2007);
- Vänner och älskare (2008);
- Slump: kollektiv roman (2008);
- Det gångna är inte en dröm (2010);
- Brev till min dotter (2012);
- Med sina lappars svalka (2014);
- annu ett liv (2017);
- Slaget om Troja (2018)