The Garden of the Runaways

Maroutsou loves gardens. You will usually see her existing as a garden herself. It is no coincidence that she often chooses floral attire. Perpetual blooming and the ephemeral are tied together—it is the very botanical nature of literature. And Maroutsou is literature, because you are what you eat. Her way of seizing the day is to write it.

An elaborate puzzle of the different psyches detected in the pages, like the representations in the frescoes of Pompeii.

In her new novella, Elena Maroutsou, using a five-day school trip to Pompeii as a catalyst, gives voice to characters scorched by desire and pain, children with unexpected reflexes of composure, and even inanimate objects within a heartbreaking echo chamber.

Maroutsou creatively reformulates key constants of her writing. Here, too, the polyphony, the bold, playful, multidimensional yet perfectly controlled narrative structure, the ability to connect, transform, and highlight disparate elements, and the obsession with exploring memory and identity constitute a work that engages substantially with her previous ones, without repeating itself, completing a new conception that is equally imaginative and subversive.

– Chrysa Fanti, Efimerida ton Syntakton

Elena Maroutsou's prose is flexible, light, and charming.

Maroutsou constructs a polyphonic novella where, among the characters, she integrates the narratives of objects connected to the place's past and the figures of the present. This allows her to alternate the text's style and maintain in her prose the poetical quality and vividness that distinguish her writing. The author’s writing as a whole is characterized by its allusive language, a fact further confirmed by the choice of the title.

The novella is structured as a polyphonic narrative, where each character adds their own piece to the mosaic of the story. The individual voices function like fragments of a larger fresco that is revealed gradually.

Elena Maroutsou's new book draws its title from the homonymous monument, bridging yesterday with today. A delightful, polyphonic novella, where you quickly realize that "the ghosts of others are always lighter."

"Voices of people made of stone." Elena Maroutsou embarks on a journey through history, archaeology, and literary imagination, inspired by Pompeii.

– Vangelis Hatzivassiliou, To Vima

"Η νουβέλα της Έλενας Μαρούτσου, με τη μικρή της έκταση (μόλις 100 σελίδες) και την πυκνή, ευφάνταστη αφήγηση, είναι ένα γοητευτικό βιβλίο που ανοίγει παράθυρα όχι μόνο στις ζωές των ηρώων, αλλά και στο μακρινό ιστορικό παρελθόν. Αξίζει να διαβαστεί και σίγουρα θα αγαπηθεί."