Foreign Words
Οι ξένες λέξεις · Oi xenes lexeis
Vassilis Alexakis (Βασίλης Αλεξάκης, born 1943)
Translated by Alyson Waters
English editions
In EnglishForeign Words
Autumn Hill Books · United States · 2006 · 214 pages
* Affiliate link. As an Amazon Associate and a Bookshop.org affiliate I earn from qualifying purchases. The price stays the same for you.
Grieving for his father, Nikolaidis takes up a language he knows nothing about: Sango, spoken in the Central African Republic. He learns it alone, from written sources, so that the dictionary becomes almost a character, and his progress in the language keeps pace with his slow return to calm. When a local teacher appears, the lessons move from vocabulary and grammar to society, to spoken and written language and to learned versus popular speech, questions that also point back at Greece. Gentle irony and humour carry a sharp critique of the role France played in colonial Africa.
AI-generated summary
About the book
- Form
- Novel
- Length
- 334 pages in the original
- Genres
- Autofiction (assigned by AI)
- First published
- 2003 by Εξάντας
- Author's age
- 60 when first published
- ISBN
9789602565537 (original)
9780975444412 (Autumn Hill Books, United States)