Transit

This is a novel describing the life of Theophilos Mailis, a Greek immigrant in America who returns to Greece. Theophilos Mailis never settled anywhere. Wandering and constantly returning, ultimately stateless, he lived as his youth spent in the sponge-diving huts of Kalymnos had determined: the sea as a temporary abode and as a challenge. ‘…He smoothed his moustache a little, looking around him absently. In the end, it would take two more generations to rid himself of the spectre of Greece, which had haunted him so much in his youth, the spectre that had sent him to the other side of the world and which he thought he would shake off the moment he set foot on foreign soil. Whatever he had failed to do himself—to cut himself off for good, to cast a black stone behind him—his grandchildren would do on his behalf. And they would do it against his will. Because he had changed his mind. He loved Greece, but it was as if, from the moment he had emigrated, he had given events a push in a certain direction that he could no longer change. And it was as if he had no say in the matter. It was as if he were obeying someone whose sole aim was to thwart his plans…’