H.A. Chomenidis is directly inspired by today. He is writing an -almost- realistic novel, which takes place in Athens in 2021 and deals with everything that touches us, moves us, scares us.
Its central hero, Tzimis Papidakis, a child of the 60s and 70s, son of a janitor, adopted by an old protagonist of the National Theater, is – on the threshold of his sixty years – one step before the fulfillment of his great dream: to emerge to the first and best theater entrepreneur in Greece. The theater that he has inherited in Fokionos Negri and which – for almost forty years – staged third-rate performances, cheap farces and inspections of the calamity became the navel of the theater of Athens.
Tzimis has made excellent use of the pandemic. During the quarantine he has renovated his theater from the ground up. He has engaged with generous advances the cream of the crop of actors, writers, directors, musicians… All those who under normal circumstances would have snubbed him, considered him a illegitimate heir to a glorious name.
The show he is preparing, “The downy mildew”, has all the specifications to triumph. Jimis is in overstimulation. He longs not for business profit, but for existential vindication. Tzimis Papidakis, with his kimberiliki, with his expensive suits and with his aristocratic gestures, is a guy of the piazza. At the same time, he’s a bit shady, like all of us. Within him lives the childhood self and its dead. He talks with them, he gives an account to them. Even if he insists that he hates nostalgia.
A breath before his triumph, due to a chance encounter with a desperate, ruthless man, Tzimis Papidakis will be destroyed. He will be overwhelmed by the new reality of social media, fake news, character assassination. Completely confused, innocent, unable to defend himself, he will be given over to a saponified crowd that delights in devouring. Torn between pity and rage.
Tzimis Papidakis is an analog man in a digital universe. In his face, the coming generations take bloody revenge on the previous ones. No one of his own can protect Jimmy. Nor his nineteen-year-old daughter, who belongs to the future. Not even the Hive, which changes with dizzying speed and transforms from his homeland into a stranger to that place.
Jimis in the Hive is the requiem of those who are imperceptibly left behind, in a rapidly changing world. The terrible step apology of a good man who is simply being overtaken by time.
ISBN 9789601698014
Pataki Publishing House
Weight 0.48
368 pages
Dimensions 14×21
Date last printed December 2021
Date of 1st present edition September 2021
Author Chomenidis A.A.
Cart is empty
