Aeroplast
A group of friends come of age during Europe’s current crisis of consciousness.
When five friends take the train to Portbou - the seaside village where Walter Benjamin died in 1940 - to settle old accounts and share painful truths, they are adrift, disillusioned and anchored only by their fragile ties.
There is Iker, a witty, if psychologically-troubled Spaniard, trapped in an emotional and social standstill; Catalan Marti, a narcissistic visionary pursuing his next grand project; Melanie, a beautiful and kind-hearted Englishwoman living through an unexpected betrayal; Kaj, a handsome German captain questioning his adventurous life; and enigmatic Antigone, a Greek novelist, who has abandoned her six-year-old child in Helsinki and whose unforgivable rejection serves as the group’s centre of gravity.
Their intertwined stories, told in five first-person narratives, set up a plot of desperate wandering in Europe but principally a descent into the abyss of their personal relationships. Are those who make decisions, like Antigone, in a better place than those who decline to make them? Is it possible to change without destroying - especially those you love? In a novel of great depth and intelligence, Dimitrakaki paints an unforgettable picture of a disintegrating Europe, where oppression and alienation are not just reserved for the newcomers fleeing poverty and war but also transform the lives of the continent’s once privileged and hopeful ‘natives’, North and South.
Original Title: Αεροπλάστ
Author: Angela Dimitrakaki
Publication Year: 2015
Pages: 390
Publisher: Hestia Publishers
Genre: Fiction - Novel
