Stolen Time

by Vangelis Hatziyannidis

Overview

A young and poverty-stricken student agrees to spend two weeks in a remote hotel with a group of strangers for the equivalent of five months’ rent.

The discovery of a list of names and dates written on a wardrobe drawer in his room makes the young man curious about previous “guests” of the group. His unease increases when he finds a concealed room and its alarming contents.

It is only years later that he is able to look back on what took place in the hotel and begin to piece all the parts of the puzzle together . . .

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780714531267
Publisher:	Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd
Publication date:	04/01/2007
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Vangelis Hatziyannidis was an well known Greek actor until a virus confined him to a wheelchair and he turned his career to writing.

Editorial Reviews

Is Aino, the Greek goddess of secrets, a contemporary fabrication?An archaeology student in Athens is seen on TV by a five-person "sect" devoted to the goddess. The director, actress, photographer, goldsmith and antique collector pay the student (the unnamed narrator) to live at the Aino Hotel, where they can observe and interrogate him about his past. Meanwhile, he studies them and pries into their secrets, which include associating with a junta sympathizer and supporting the drug-addicted sister of an earlier subject who became their victim. Predictably, there is a secret chamber in the hotel. As in his first novel, Four Walls (2006), Hatziyannidis fixates on the effects of enforced isolation. But here, the initial set-up and subsequent plotting are so contrived that the book and its Aino codex (yes, there is a codex, as well as writing on the underside of a drawer) can be read only allegorically. Just how remains a secret, veiled by the author's (or translator's) cliches, the narrator's digressions and, possibly, by a cultural context alien to the non-Greek reader. A short novel that feels too long.

Kirkus Reviews