Eurydice Street

A wonderfully fresh, funny, and inquiring account of a family's move to Athens and their adaption to a new culture.

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In the 1980s, a young English anthropologist from a Russian migrant family went to Greece as a student and fell in love with the country. In the summer of 2001, married to an expatriate Greek and the mother of two young daughters, she returned for good. Eurydice Street chronicles the first year of her new life and takes its shape from the seasons and celebrations of the Greek year. Resolutely urban and unsentimental, it is the story of making a home in one of the most visited but least understood European cities. Zinovieff pursues her dream of becoming Greek , watching her children becoming Greek, too, and her husband returning to his roots after half a lifetime away. But the book is much more than the story of one family negotiating a new culture. Zinovieff s fascinating exploration of Greece s chaotic capital leads her to investigate the history of the city and its inhabitants sense of their own past, as well as its future as a centre for immigration from the East; its often difficult relationship with its neighbour and one-time overlord, Turkey, and its more recent antagonism to the USA; and the music and poetry which so effectively capture the soul of the Greek people. And the way, there are humorous excursions on everything from smoking, nightclubs, the 2a.m. rush hour and the art of catching a taxi.