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Athina and her Daughters: a memoir of two worlds

Author: Eleni Frangouli-Nika
Title: Athina ke oi kores tis: mnimes dio kosmon
pp 182 pbk,
ISBN 9780980532159
Language: Greek
Publication Series: Writing the Greek Diaspora
Year of publication: 2012
RRP: $20.00

This memoir was first published in English under the title Athina and her Daughters: a memoir of two worlds and was followed by this translation into Greek by the same author in 2012. The book tells the story of a Greek mother and her five daughters, and their journey through all of the 20th century from Greece – with its rural and urban traditions, politics, occupations and civil wars – to migration in Australia where the daughters come for a better life. Through a polyphonic narrative, it lets the women speak in their own voices and tell their own stories about the impact of major events in their lives.

The author – who is the youngest daughter of this family – writes in her prologue:

"...my ultimate hope is that this memoir will be added to the myriad other migrant stories told, and serve as one more document of the social, political, cultural and historical upheavals that Greek women went through during the last century. With war and migration as the pivotal events, their lives were inexorably marked."

About the author: Eleni Frangouli-Nickas (also known as Helen Nickas) is a former lecturer of Greek studies at La Trobe University; an editor and publisher of Greek-Australian literary writers, and a literary translator.