WHO IS WHO

I am a Cypriot, born and raised in Achna and live in London since 1956, and I write novels and short stories for adults and children in English. I am also a founding member, and chairman, of Newham Writers Workshop, a collective of writers, dramatists and poets—more details of which can be found on the Workshop website. I have also donated manuscripts, including the translation of A peasant boy in Cyprus into κοτσιηνοχωρκάτικα, to the archives of Cyprus Library and of course copies of all my published works. Recently United p.c. has published four of my works: 1) A peasant virgin in London, a novel in paperback—an idealistic young man is compelled to escape the escalating violence of the colonial conflict in Cyprus and comes to live in London with his brother, with clear intention of qualifying as an Economist and returning to help lift his country out of its poverty. But London is not what he thought it would be, a disappointment aggravated by the lack of forthrightness he suspects in his brother, the dirty and noisy flat he shares with him and the drudgery of the job he ends up with, linking sausages in the meat processing factory where his brother and his girlfriend also work, all of which culminate in a disastrous sexual experience and a complete reappraisal of his future… 2) A Peasant boy in Cyprus, a periodic novel in paperback—the inventor, who makes things his wife wishes he did not, Andonis, the fat boy extortionist with limited ambitions, the taming of the fearsome Mad Elias, the sweet smelling Goula and her most wonderful bed, the death of the giant War Hero, the traumas of death in the family, how the Freemason got a husband for his aging daughter, the love and punishment of the peddler Costakis, the daring raid on the Moneylender’s grapes, the Rogue Wrestler who demands hospitality from all and gets his comeuppance, the terrors of a curfew and a host of other extraordinary events, characters and situations seen through the eyes of a boy growing up in a Cypriot village during the nineteen forties and fifties… 3) Tales from my Street, a collection of short stories in paperback—from the theorist, who offers analysis, explanation, illumination or contortion to any subject and is also an exquisite satirist, the nice woman who lives down the street, who always smells nice and offers the promise of risqué interludes, the unhappy teenager diversion and fulfilment in an antiwar demonstration, the mysterious and deceptively fragile old lady who comes for help with a bundle of banknotes, the handsome drifter whom no kind-hearted women could not want to mother, the lonely woman who allows herself to be trapped into boarding freeloader to the beautiful August afternoon when bloody violence comes to the street… 4) The honoured Guest, a children’s novel in paperback—an eleven-year-old girl’s life becomes increasingly troublesome, after her father’s decision to take his invalid mother out of the nursing home she lived for many years and bring her to live with them, especially the secrecy she suspects in her parents over that move and the squabbles that eventually erupt in the extended family over Granny’s field, and whenever the pressures become unbearable she finds relief and escape in fantasy…