A Balkan Man in the Americas

I have had the chance to interview many interesting people from different paths of life (some of them for my weekly radio show in the Greek Public Radio - once upon a time). At the same time I have been often interviewed by others.  Interviewing is an art, a fragile and difficult one. Some weeks ago I had the honor to be the guest of Eleanor Watchel in her CBC Radio's  Writers & Company . She was in her studio in Canada and I had to talk with her from a studio in Boston. It was the smallest studio I had ever encountered. When I first saw how "microscopic" it  was, I got concerned and somehow anxious. The first thought coming to my mind was that  I was not going to afford more than 30 minutes staying in there. Finally, we talked for almost one hour and a half. I totally forgot about the “oppressive” dimensions of the studio and about time. Eleanor Wachtel is one of the most amazing interviewers I have known. Her series of interviews " Gr...

«Two lightening bolts were delivered to my room/ they were gifts from Zeus/In the cradle of Democracy/ The pigeons are wearing gas masks” Two lightening bolts filled up with explosive black humor from Nick Cave, which crashes the myth of Zeus, calling the “darling little boys” who evoke his inheritance, to get out of their myths of the past and look at the present in the face. Wake up - before it’s too late, before it gets so ridiculously and tragically dark, before “we are, I say, mostly lost”…

This is an excerpt from my last book, The Last Page, published some three weeks ago. It has been trasnlated and edited by Gigi Papoulias It took a woman from China to make him understand that being happy with one woman is not enough to keep you from lusting after or falling in love with another. The secret-Jew had it all. He had an enviable position at the National Library which allowed him to read forbidden books in French – an act which was prohibited for m ost of the mere mortals in Albania. He often felt like he belonged to the finest caste of people and this filled him with self-confidence and great joy which led to a feeling of superiority. His life was filled with the presence of his beautiful wife and their young son. Until one day, literally out of the blue, she appeared. She had come to the National Library for two months, as part of an “exchange of experiences between workers of the two peoples of communist countries.” Perhaps it was the French which she spoke t...

"Elective Affinities" in Harvard Square : )) I have found my family name, till now, beside Albania and Greece, in countries I have lived or visited: Turkey, Serbia, Bulgaria, Macedonia (sorry, FYROM), Poland, Ukraine, German, Czech Republic, Kosovo (sorry, Kosova), Montenegro, France and USA. From a quick research I have learned “Kaplan” or "Kapllan" (with two "l") exists also in India, Pakistan, Egypt, Libya, Israel and the West Bank (among Palestinians) and in China (among Muslim Uighurs). It’s cool to feel so globalized, having a surname which “links” people from around the world who haven’t any parental or common origin between them. I hope the people who carry the same surname “Kaplan” to not hate or fight each other, as it happens time after time in my beloved Balkan land: where often we claim and strife for the copy right of common names, foods, saints, heroes and anti-heroes, music and dances we share…