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Chrysoula Georgoula: Λέγε με Στράτο (Call Me Stratos)

Earlier this year (2025) I read twenty Greek novels but found it considerable difficulty to locate any written since the beginning of the 21st century so this is a most welcome translation.

Around 2010 Greece went through a major ecomic crisis. The country was massively in debt and the government had to slash public services and increase taxes. This novel is to a great extend about how this affected the ordinary Greek people, focusing on an extended family and their friends and associates.

As the title tells us our hero is Stratos. While, as we shall see, Stratos has many faults he does make an effort to provide for his family. Initially he had worked in the construction industry and was apparently the best roofer in the region.

Work in the construction industry was drastically cut back because of the economic situation, so he opened up a car wash business in the basement of his former family home. He continues to do some odd jobs in the construction industry while running the car wash business. He is married to Sotiria, a nurse who specialises in looking after people with dementia and they will eventually have two children, a daughter and then a son. Stratos seems very devoted to his family. However.Stratos has fhis faults. Like his father,he is a heavy drinker. The father father died before much of the action in this book takes place.

Like many people who drink too muchStratos can also behave badly when he is drunk. He has a friend.Memos, who also has many flaws, including not working and supporting Manchester United.Stratos supports the Greek team Panathaikos. The two have a vicious fight in whichStratos is hurt and they fall out. Stratos who is often very irresponsible foolishly phones, the police claiming thatMemos is a terrorist. Both men are arrested because of course the police know what number he phones from and not for the first or the last time they just about manage to wiggle their way out of punishment. Stratos is in trouble with the law more than once, both because of fighting but also because he has a very antisocial habit of playing music very loudly at night and in the early hours of the morning. The neighbours complain which makes him behave even worse.

A lot of this is quite amusing, though at times somewhat distressng,with the men behaving badly and the women trying, usually unsuccessfully, to moderate their husband’s ‘behaviour. Stratos has other flaws He seems fairly devoted to his wife but he does cheat on her and, of course, his overall behaviour causes her a lot of grief.

There is more bad behaviour. His wife gets cats for the children but he does not like them and even throws one out of the window. They say cats have nine lives and our cat was no different.. He is also a racist, particularly against the Albanian immigrants and refuses to let his daughter go to a school which is accepting Albanian immigrants.
His brother is no better, marrying a rich woman and not working and then cheating on her with a cleaning lady. He gets thrown out and moves back to his mother and does not do any work. Stratos offers him work at the car wash and generously give him some money though he does not help in the car wash. Lefteris, the brother, is far from grateful.

So we follow his story from working in construction and doing well and then, when the construction jobs fell off, his successful car wash. However, we are now going into the dark side of modern Greek history. The economy is collapsing and of course Greeks then do without luxuries and luxuries include having your car washed. Business drops off and of course there is now very little construction work so he is relying very much on his wife’s salary from her nursing.

And still, it gets worse. A friend kills himself and Sotiria has an affair at least in part because of his affair with the lady who runs a coffee shop next to his car wash. Perhaps not surprisingly he feels he is justified in hitting her when he finds out of course does not think that he should receive reciprocal punishment. Even his nine-year-old daughter is getting fed up with him and says to him Strato dear, go suck an egg,.

The inevitable happens and they split up. Because of the children she gets to keep the flat and he has to go and live with his mother who is, of course very doting though mildly critical. He does manage to get various jobs but inevitably his temper and overall bad behaviour means he is unable to hold onto them. In many ways he is his own worst enemy, shooting himself in the foot all too often. How much farther could I have gone,, being the son of a drunkard, the grandson of a bully and the third grandson of a killer? I spent a lifetime with three stamps branded onto my forehead .

While there is no doubt that the economic situation in Greece is partially to blame for his behaviour, it is also clear. that some of his behaviour is inherited from his father and grandfather and, of course, in many cases he is himself entirely to blame for his behaviour. Obviously he drinks too much. It is clear that he needs to learn to control his anger. He is totally selfish, as we see. with his playing loud music at night. On occasions he is a loving husband on other occasions he clearly is not. The same applies to his parenting with his young son devoted to him. After the separation. He drifts into right wing politics which became more common in Greece at that time partially because of the economic situation and partly because people from poor countries migrated to Greece via Turkey.

It certainly is interesting to see a more modern account of Greece in a novel translated into English and learn how devastating that economic crisis was for the average working person. Stratos is certainly an interesting case in that he has all too many faults but at the same time buried somewhere inside, there does seem to be a man who is prepared to work and be devoted to his family as long as everything goes his way.

Publishing history

First published in 2020 byBacchikon
First English translation in 2025 by Istros Books
Translated byMarianna Avouri