Il nonno bugiardo

Anthony is an ordinary 10-year-old boy living in Athens. Single child, his parents both working long hours, he is very fond of his Granddad, who looks after him when his parents are busy. He is an unusual Granddad. A retired actor, he stimulates Anthony’s imagination by telling him unbelievable stories from his life that make Anthony think that he is a liar. However Granddad, an artist of strong humanist beliefs, is being bluntly honest. For Anthony, it is just hard to believe when Granddad tells him how he had to escape from Greece to Paris at the time of the dictatorship because he was an activist or how he came to be on the streets of Paris with the rebelling students in May ’68 or even how he was sent to Africa by mistake during World War II. Nevertheless, Anthony adores and admires his grandfather. The only thing he cannot understand is why the old man never talks about Granny. It is really mysterious. She is consistently absent from Granddad’s stories, as if she had never existed. How can he make his Granddad lift the shadow that veils her existence? Through her unique style of writing, Alki Zei reports to young generations complex historical events and evokes themes, such as racism, exile, importance of democracy, social disparity, marginality, with a fine balance between irony and paradox, simplicity and perfection, humor and reality. In 2009 “Granddad the Liar” has been published in French with the title “Grand père menteur”. In 2008-09 it passed as a sequel in the Greek television. In 2010 it won the Young Europeans Literary Prize (France).