The Parthenon Bomber

A novel at once metaphorical and iconoclastic, The Parthenon Bomber exposes the painful and maddening paradox of contemporary Greece.
 
“Blow up the Acropolis” was the 1944 call to action by the surrealist circle the Harbingers of Chaos. Sixty years later, a young man obliges. The Parthenon has been destroyed, the city orphaned. Is it still Athens?
 
All eyes are on the empty hill, now smoky and ashen. Cries of distress, indifference, and fanaticism fill the air. What were his reasons? How will he be punished for this unspeakable act of violence? What does it mean for Greece, now deprived of its greatest symbol?
 
This provocative tale reveals the unique dilemma of a country still searching for an identity beyond its past as the birthplace of Western civilization.

Christos Chrissopoulos is a novelist, essayist, and translator, and one of the most prolific young prose writers in Greece. He is the author of twelve books, was an Iowa Fellow in 2007, and has won several literary prizes including the Balkanika Prize (2015), the Prix Laure-Bataillon (2014), the Prix Ravachol (2013), and the Academy of Athens Prize (2008). In addition to writing, he is the founder and director of the DaseinFest International Literary Festival in Athens, and since 1999 he has collaborated with the visual artist Diane Neumaier on several art projects and exhibitions.

John Cullen is the translator of many books from Spanish, French, German, and Italian, including Philippe Claudel’s Brodeck, Juli Zeh’s Decompression, Chantal Thomas’s The Exchange of Princesses, and Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation. He lives in upstate New York.