English

Enchiridion Euthanasiae: Handbook for a Good Death (preview)

This is the first full-length English translation of Tasos Leivaditis’ collection of prose-poems, Enchiridion Euthanasiæ (or Handbook for a Good Death ), originally published in Greek in 1979 and awarded that year Greece’s highest honour in poetry, the State Poetry Prize. Leivaditis, born in Athens in 1922, had by the time the book was published experienced the devastation of the German occupation in WWII, quickly followed by an even bloodier civil war, this in turn leading to decades of authoritarian right-wing rule culminating in the military dictatorship of 1967-74. These experiences purged Leivaditis’ of his youthful idealism but also plunged him into darkness and despair, out of which emerged some of his finest poetry, including the present ‘enchiridion’, an operating manual of sorts, giving us the tools with which to live and die well. Publisher Note: This is a digital preview of the hand-made casebound edition published by Human Side Press and limited to 75 copies. More info at www.humansidepress.com

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