000			02047nam a2200229 a 4500
001			055648
005			20231009193038.0
008			190122s20042004nyc 000 0 eng d
020			_a9780865476998
082	1		_a92 SAR _2
100	1		_aSarrinikolaou, George
245	1	0	_aFacing Athens : _bencounters with the modern city _c/ George Sarrinikolaou
260			_aNew York _b: North Point Press _c, 2004
300			_a144 p. _c; 22 cm.
520			_aA legendary city seen afresh from an expatriate's point of view. In this book, George Sarrinikolaou, a native Athenian expatriated to America, strips Athens of its clichés to reveal a city straining under the passions and burdens of early-twenty-first-century life. Modern Athens exists in the shadow of its ancient past: cradle of civilization, birthplace of democracy, inspiration for the Olympic Games. But as the city prepares to host the 2004 Summer Olympics, it faces challenges quite unlike those depicted in mythology and epic poetry. As Sarrinikolaou walks through the city, striving to face the Athens of his childhood head-on, he encounters people who reveal the demythologized city: newly wealthy Greeks at a Las Vegas-style nightclub; Gypsies building a middle-class house amid their squalid encampment; Kurdish and Eastern European immigrants seeking day labor in Omonia Square; aged Athenians wistfully recalling the past as their neighborhood crumbles around them. In their stories, Sarrinikolaou sees the economic, social, and historical forces that are shaping Athens today. This is the Athens that even many Athenians see only in passing, and in Facing Athens Sarrinikolaou claims it for himself, a perennial visitor, and also for the reader, who, in effect, visits the city through his gritty, lyrical, unstinting, yet finally affectionate portrait of the place.
546			_aEnglish
600	1	4	_aSarrinikolaou, George _d(1970 -)
650		4	_aGreek, Americans _v--Biography
651		4	_aAthens (Greece) _x-Social life and customs
942			_cMO
999			_c257678 _d257678