CZM Book Club Presents: Stories from "Black Box," by Mata Kastrisiou and translated by Kostas Kaltsas

0:00 Cool Zone Media.

0:08 Hello, and welcome to Cool Zone Media Book Club. The only book club where you don't have to do the reading, because I do it for you. Also, the only book club that I'm currently recording while standing up. I've recently started recording standing up. And you'd think it would be for my health. And maybe that's part of it. But actually...

0:28 My dog can sleep at my feet better when I'm recording, when I'm standing up. So I like it more. Anyway, I am your host, Margaret Kiljoy. And today, we are taking a trip over to Greece. Because our friends at, there's a, okay, tangent. There's a newspaper. It's called The Anarchist Review of Books. And it's an honest-to-God print newspaper.

0:52 And it does exactly what it says on the tin. It is The Anarchist Review of Books. And it's really cool. And you should check it out. But they've also started not just reviewing books, but publishing books. And they just published a collection of short stories called Black Box. And these stories were originally written in Greek by Mata Kastrisiu in 2013. And they were translated into English by Kostas Kostas.

1:16 And I'm just going to read you. I actually picked up my own copy of this book at the Baltimore Book Festival this last weekend. And I'm excited about it. I want to read you the editor's introduction from the recent English release. Written in Greece during a period of economic and political upheaval, these stories in this slim volume draw upon the rich imagery of the Mediterranean, the Balkans, outer space, and a mythic imaginary America. The settings are tangible, an empty lot, the sea, a dumpster, a graveyard, but they are also out of time and place, unrecognizable. The black box is populated with intimate portraits of neighbors, of lovers, of mothers, and archetypical abstractions, ghosts, mermaids, photoelectric gods, who

2:05 whisper in the reader's ear. In these shifts lies power and poetry. Castricio's language sits at the intersection of naturalism, surrealism, and abstraction. Deftly translated by Kostas Kostas, the writing retains its Greek character, at once emotionally probing declaratory, and descriptive, yet elusive and radically imaginative. And I'm going to read you a bunch of these stories because they're actually all pretty short. And they're written in a very impressionistic pose, unlike basically every other piece we've read on this show.

2:41 These stories are really bare bones, like most of them don't even have a condensed point of view character. They kind of walk this line between poetry and prose, and that's really fascinating. And they're an interesting experiment in What happens when you strip everything away and crystallize a moment, an emotion, a contradiction? And this might be good listening for an autumn walk, now that it's autumn-ish, or a foggy coffee on the stoop. And so there's four of these stories. Let's get started. A House on Earth by Mata Kastrisiu Now night is falling, and we're all so tired that the strength has left our arms. the arms that are made to embrace, to lull someone to sleep.

3:28 Perhaps in some other place, some other time, not far from here. We fortified our city with the drawn-out languor of our songs and assumed our deaths would keep the profane and the complacent at bay. By nightfall, they will have breached our walls, our children perch on the fence, war standards drawn with dirt on their faces, hurling rocks and rotten fruit. Young predators taking up their positions, toothless and weaponless on the front line of a timeless, futile battle.

4:00 Our children, skin and bones, and damaged mouths. You fell asleep early again, and besides, I know that nothing can wake you. Not car horns, not music, not even my half-hearted calls for you to get out of bed. By morning, it will all be over, and you'll be calmly afloat in your dreams. as sweet and serene as can be.

4:24 We were almost caught off guard. They tried to enter our city uninvited while we were holding a feast and had taken off our shoes and couldn't run and we were late to our defenses, a few precious moments late. The feast, the likes of which aren't held anymore, spread out from one end of the city to the other.

4:44 We'd laid out colorful cloths on the long marble tables and sat on the ground in the tree's shade and buried our palms in the dirt and felt a warmth as though we were holding the hands of our loved ones tight, whispering to them that we were there beside them. In this life, people leave, whether in five years or in ten, so that one story can end and another can begin anew in its place. We danced and sang, and all of us women wore a flower in our hair.

5:15 At sunset, your grandfather started singing an old traditional tune, and tears poured down our faces, and we walked away. And only the children were left standing by his side, staring at him with their puzzled eyes as though they were staring at an ancient plain tree. When the song ended, they went back to their games with their suntanned faces, back to the earthy summer, dusty with strange air. We were caught off guard. They entered our house uninvited, their clothes wrinkled, showing no respect. but we pitied them and it's this compassion that makes us hold tightly to each other and together fortify our city walls. It's only a matter of minutes before a bulldozer is brought out to tear down our fence. We've decided in silent complicity that

6:03 this battle will be hand to hand and last until this day is done and another day dawns for us. It really is such a shame you fell asleep, for this was a great feast for our city. But how can I be mad at you? You grew tired, out all morning running around, playing, naked in your skin, and that sun piercing your fingertips, pinning your fingers down. I often think how different everything would be if we, too, lived with them, in the outside world, or in some other city with open borders or maybe a sea, or even some place where the snow never stopped falling. Maybe I'd scold you all the time. Who can say? Fearing you'd get lost and not find your way home. Fearing you'd catch a cold. Maybe you'd be such a bad

6:50 student your teacher would summon me to your school to admonish me. Then again, maybe you'd be the best. What nonsense. Exiled here, we did at least spare our lives such painful worries, chronic damp phobias that come in winter like bedbugs under our mattresses. Outside our walls, innocence is circumscribed by the lines of a student notebook. I speak to you and leave gaps in my sentences in case you want to draw something in them. How foolish your mom is.

7:20 How foolish. I don't know how to tell the time, but I hear silence outside the walls and think it must be very late. Past midnight. Beside me, some have fallen asleep and I bite their hands to wake them. Bite and kiss them, even though I would very much like to let them lie like this for a while. Calm.

7:39 With lips half-closed and their breath a living thing touching my face, keeping me company. Besides, I'm used to being the one who stays awake. When we came here years ago, we pleaded our way into our fair share of land. The earthquake had left us homeless, and all we wanted was a piece of ground where we could close our eyes and an empty plastic cup to seed with our memories, in the hope that one day they'd grow into the branches of something poisonous and smother us instantly. The mausoleums were, after all, as large as cellars. We only had to get used to lying down with someone else, sharing our sleep It wasn't that hard, even though at first, at night, we were too embarrassed to scream lest we wake our

8:23 companion in oblivion. So we bit down on our arms to stay silent and spat out the blood, giving away the life that still dawned for us. Ten years now I've slept next to a frozen arm six inches long that clenched its fists stubbornly one night, stifling a quiet sob, a button of a tear, a pearl. Behind the tombs we plant bulbs that grow into strange flowers, and our children grow up, play, run merrily among the trees, and never fight among themselves, keep company to all the dead, give them their marbles, tend to their photographs with such care you'd think every face they touch was that of a dearest beloved. On Sundays, those outside our walls come visit and place small candles on the tombs, and the

9:12 utter darkness grows lighter. Some of them stare with terror, fearing it's been so long, so eternally long since they left their own families behind, that only we remain to help them comb their hair in the morning and put on their Sunday best, help them disguise their sadness and old age. Yet they rush to leave before the sun has time to set, dusting off their clothes and looking mistrustfully around them as they walk, afraid of carrying off the faintest hint of sorrow. Few stay on till late and talk to us. They speak to us of life outside the walls, tell stories of old, laugh often, out loud.

9:53 They look back at us fondly as they leave. They love us, just a little. They bring you candy, but I hide it from you. It's bad for your teeth, and you have such a beautiful smile. It's almost dawn, and I can hear cars approaching. At the sound of a gunshot, everyone next to me was startled awake, went back to bracing the walls. The cries from beyond them grow more savage, synchronized, mechanical. the crackle and static of an out-of-tune station. Woe to those who claimed it's we who disturb the dead. Already a part of our fence has collapsed, and someone's jumped through it. My screams are not enough. My mouth is not enough. My hands, I'll cut them off. What good are they? Can hold on to nothing, protect nothing. Our people are retreating as the

10:41 gunfire grows heavier. Where can I go? Inside which tomb can I hide? all available space taken up by the dead and their hundreds, fighting to get out, crawling over each other's backs, jostling, and I have no arms to embrace them with and quiet them down. Don't wake up now. Don't see. Don't feel. Rest peacefully asleep, my child. I'll remain here with you, though I might be the only one.

11:08 For where would I go? Where would I live? No matter how big the house I'm given, not even my head will fit inside. At night, it will grow huge and seek you out. Reach for the walls, press up against them, tear them down. Our forts have collapsed and so have our walls, making a muffled sound as though in pain. We crawl on all fours and the outside world with its guns and cars invades the pedestrian walkway, contaminating it. Marble collapses and breaks to pieces on our faces.

11:39 Take care, my child. Don't you die a second time. Don't be killed. Put the sky over your head and protect yourself and let me hold the pillars and the stones. Let me be the one to blame for not building you a house solid enough that not even death could tear it down. And not knowing still and always staying up at night in case you ever want to tell me, my boy, only if you want to, whether trapped down there in the wreckage of a life that wasn't spared, whether you felt pain or whether you hummed under your breath that nursery rhyme about Papa Rabbit and his six bunnies and one kid goat, the one he fed carrots to so it would grow up just like his other children and learn to wiggle its ears and its pink

12:22 nose and nibble its food with its little teeth and be smart and beautiful and clean. The sun is high again. Two hands covered in filth are dragging me out of my city. The police gather up our clothing and crockery, and not a single god in the sky to rain down fire and burn us bright in our tears. I'm pushed and kicked, and it was only a feast, a small, quiet feast, and I left gaps between the words for you to fill if you ever wanted to. With the last of my might, I hold on to a handful of dirt, and as they're pulling me out of you, away from you, I begin to chew and chew it and swallow it with my saliva and my tears, and I think I can hear you whisper from inside your square little house, whisper and walk in your sleep. Stay

13:10 in your bed, and don't get up. It's late, very late. The sun's turned dark. The sun's turned black. It's night, the deepest, thickest night. Don't get up. Your mama is watching over you. How foolish your mom is. How foolish. They've got us on some upper floor, way up high, all crammed together, near the top of a high rise.

13:32 They even gave us blankets in summertime. Through its floor-to-ceiling windows I can make out, far away, two cities, one by the sea, one with open borders where the snow never stops falling. Place is a concept even more abstract than death. And now, my child, how can I part with you? And that's the end of that story. And, dear listener, I must part with you for this ad break.

14:12 Welcome back. Okay, second story. Garbage Trucks at 6 a.m. by Mata Kastrisiu. My mother's face smelled of the sea. I no longer recall her form. It's been centuries. Her body must lie buried somewhere, and maybe one day, all of the disconsolate, yearning to be held, will find it by its odor, unearth it, and lose themselves in oceanic depths and summer afternoons. The memory that bodies give off is stronger than that of love. I sought nothing more than warm sleep, next to the remnants of days and the clutter of people. At night, I climbed up to my little green house, a barefoot cat with its ears bloodied, and until sleep came, I made up stories about children's ruined shoes and rotten apples. Soon I fell asleep. The

15:05 silence of the garbage is unbearable at night, when all falls quiet, Sometimes I slid my bin on its little wheels along wide avenues and left my roof open, the sky revealing itself to me full of stars. I no longer have hands. Now I'll have to climb up using my teeth. The street's strays will bark at me and mob me in the dark. No one comes near me because I reek. If anyone dared stand by me for a few minutes, I would whisper that once upon a time, my hair was bleached white and smelled of cedar. and lilies bloomed in my hands. New Year's Day was dawning, and I closed my eyes, curled up and quiet. I lay on festive wreaths, and the sequin of a broken bauble nicked my cheek. The angels came down from the

15:52 Christmas tree and covered me, the only ones who could stand the smell washing up on the shores of my eyes. I woke to noise and pain without end. At first, I thought it was the cold. Then out of my mouth fell orange peels and stories from back issues of the papers. A trial, a robbery, a suicide. The 34th suicide.

16:15 My bones crushed. I weighed nothing now, sinking into slow, eternal immobility in the thick depths of foul sensations and waste. The new year found me limbless. If you can see me, mother, wrap your disfigured child in a warm wool blanket. and lay it atop the trash pile. I'll give off something of the aura of the seashore, supervise the recycling process of day and night. When it rains, the whole city will be in the thrall of a heavy scent. We live in wild and bloody times, they'll say. People will shut their windows and mutter obscenities. Out in the streets, the garbage trucks in those loneliest hours of the day will veer off course and cross paths with ambulances and comets.

17:04 Now I can no longer sleep. My head floats atop broken shoulders. My hope is in death. When I meet you, I'll be freshly bathed and clean. We'll wear our Sunday finest. There'll be a feast. That's the end of that story. Okay, the next story. The Garden by Mata Kastrisiu The house is always on the mountains. a gleam of sea, distant and unreachable. Yet for all the clouds I could make out your form on the rock, black water bird, struggling to spread your wings. Bones crumbling, worn down to skin by sunset, draped over your head like a frayed coat, worn down to yourself, a child bird, old and frail, my beloved. The end will come, thick-colored, over my eyes, that deep blue you love so much. For months now

18:01 you've been gone, for months now I've been drinking nothing but sounds, eating nothing but poems. It was an epileptic summer. I saw it beat at the walls, paralyzed, drying its tears in salt pans. I saw it sedated, carried on a stretcher, a beautiful man who decided to die at dawn on August 31st. My husband. Here, time is defined by the dew on your trees. the muse of the cat that slinks along the flowerbeds and crops. Every morning I see you sitting at the stone table, sleepless, ordering the sun to rise, the night to withdraw, the night that puts its rifle to our heads and pulls the trigger.

18:41 You stare impatiently at the door, waiting for me to appear through it, holding a newborn story swaddled in the pages of the journals that you left me. It's paper protection. Still, I disappoint you, For all I manage every night is the difficult labor of giving birth to your mind. Bloodied, the words drowned, parentless children lost in the snow, and illiterate.

19:06 I'm writing to you with my body laid out on top of yours. Where did the time go? Your nails have grown so long. Your hair turned into roots and dug into the ground, became one with the flowers and the vegetables. Now here I am, tending to the greenest of gardens. The end will come one day as one of my howls at five in the morning, driving the nocturnal animals back to their nests and warrens. The weasels and mice will vanish down to their burrows. The spiders will cease hunting their prey, and the black moths will die pinned to the light with psychedelic rhomboids and mazes flashing behind their eyes. It will be a deafening howl.

19:45 The house will crack down to its foundations, and thousands of birds, thousands of children will pour out of the walls, out of the wooden doors and moth-eaten windows. You'll be among them, somewhere or other, and I have no other alphabet to pay back, no other image to imagine, having already recognized you in a dream being dragged away from my body, the body of my spasms, by swallows and the wild children of late summer, carried away in the beaks of eagles that cover you whole with their black wings and cries. The house is always on the mountain.

20:22 My gaze ends where the sea begins. That's the end of that story. But it's not the end of your opportunity to take advantage of all of the sweet, sweet deals offered by the products and service. Don't Don't listen to the ads. I mean, well, do whatever you want, but, you know, whatever. I don't actually endorse them. And we're back. Okay, my final story for you today. From the book Black Box.

20:59 A Balcony in the Sky by Mata Gastrisiu. There is an enormous sandlot not too far from here, somewhere between our house and the Bay of Bengal. At dusk, I can walk home, and you don't have to worry about those reds violently passing me by. With my down jacket thrown over my back, sleeves and a rough knot across my chest, I perform my balancing act on the median strip while behind me the colors deepen, the world sinks and blends together, and any hint of salvation slowly fades.

21:32 Motionless at the window, you watch me cumming, and I draw a bead on you so I don't fall. I'm a tiny dot that grows ever larger, turns fleshy and limbed, and at about quarter to eight comes home, tired and sweaty from playing. You know, around here we play soccer from sunup till sundown. The girls gathered behind the wire fence, watch and giggle even though they could never take a decent shot at goal themselves. Girls, dummies, what are you waiting for? We all wear white t-shirts and at dawn resemble a piece of sky, a view clear and visible only on cloudless days from our north-facing balcony. A faint line on the horizon. Isn't it strange? The only wounds we carry are a few nicks from a fall. Sometimes,

22:23 I'm telling you this now not to scare you, but just because it happens, my scalp itches something fierce, like the scab of an old, ancient wound. But you say, Don't pick at your scabs, my child, for the wound will bleed again and never heal. I imagine scratching at it, just so, in my mind, and the itch goes away.

22:42 Then I close my eyes and imagine that this crack in my head is a fissure so deep it reaches to my heart, and I lean over it for a better look and fall into my heart. Gathered there are all my classmates, and you, and grandma, and folks I don't know, even our deaf horse geography teacher. But you're all silent and sad. And so, I call out, Denmark? Capital?

23:07 And no one answers. I'm back here, in the comfort of this place, its warmth like snuggling in bed on Christmas. Out the window a festive drizzle is falling, and you've been up early. I lie in, watching you out of the corner of my eye as you put away my toys and make me a glass of sugar milk, nectar for princes half asleep. I lie in a bed in a suspended state of morning dizziness, though I know I must get up, because even before school was out for the holidays, I promised you an old story. I'd rather recite for you from our earth science textbook, fill our day with streams and rainfall, reefs, deciduous trees. But it's New Year's Day tomorrow, and I shouldn't be sleeping. And besides, it's why I came back. And besides, I've got nothing

23:56 more important to do. Here I go. An endless Saturday afternoon, me waiting for you to come back. The roof of our house is open to the sky, and snow is coming silently down, sneaking under the chairs, hiding from me. You've locked the front door as usual, but you can't lock out the heavens. Don't ask me to tell you whether the house is as small as a matchbox or vast as an expanse of water. It's too difficult for me.

24:26 Fear enlarges space and lengthens my distance from you. I'm cold, but stick my hands in my pockets and wait, patiently, for you to get back. For a while now, the flakes have been producing strange reflections. Through my eyelids, I see you digging into the sky, desperately searching through this immense and lonely universe for my little blue nightlight. I've laid out all my toy cars on the floor and invented a game that will last until the moment you return.

24:55 I eat my food and little bits of glass land in my drink. I hope I manage to stay awake, for I want to tell you all about school and read you a poem our French teacher gave us. I want so bad for once to be the one who watches you sleep, for me to be the one to watch over you. But that will probably never happen, because our pillows now float in a frozen lake. You'll probably be late. The season will have passed over my uncovered eyes, and a blizzard will be raging in the kitchen. I'll have learned to scream images of mercy, and my nails have grown long enough for me to make holes in my own skin. Now you're digging through the clouds with your teeth, your own body paralyzed. You pierce the viscous

25:38 layer of sky with your eyes and reach the sea. You'll probably be late. The snow blocked all the entrances, and it's fallen in a soft layer over brightly colored sheets. It will be no one's fault. I'll almost be done eating. First my lips will run like water from my face. My mouth will slip to the floor. I'll be humming with my eyes. The whole of me will be but a drop of skin. My hands will slacken and drop the spoon, release their terror and complaint and embrace my body.

26:09 I'll be a tiny little marble. I'll roll, lose myself inside a crack in the wall. The hair on my forehead, drenched in sweat, swirled in ancient forms, circular, repetitive. My pupils will fade away. My eyelids close to protect the final image seen. This will turn transparent. You will turn transparent.

26:31 There will be nothing left but a flat sheet of frozen sky.

26:37 Je voulais, maman gentille, t'offrir tes belles jonquilles. J'ai regardé les boutiques, mais les prix sont fantastiques. Et je t'offre ce poème. Pour te dire que je t'aime. I wanted, sweet mother, to give you beautiful daffodils. I searched those stores, but the prices were out of this world. And so I offer you this poem to tell you.

27:05 That I love you. You'll come home late, and you'll be tired, your eyes distorted, half-closed. You'll say, a royal quilt for my child. The veins in your legs split open and you'll be covered in a forest of bloodied branches. I wonder what it would be like if we lived in a ravaged, war-torn land.

27:28 What now?

27:29 Is it time for me to name the longest rivers in the world? No. Now a concrete garden spreads as far as the eye can see. An asphalt afternoon road. In our white t-shirts we stick to the still-wet tar, our wings leaving behind a chalk outline to remember us by. Now the garden's full of birds. Freshly bathed, ready for our Sunday stroll, we kick around a golden ball, kick around the sun. You're very far away, through a window, motionless, always waiting, almost patiently, waiting for sunset for me to unlock the door with my key and, exhausted, fall asleep in my clothes. Reaching you will take a maze of time, but it's only then you'll rest. Smiling, surrender yourself to the scant light of the room's lamp. Your redeemer, at

28:23 long last consumed by happiness.

28:26 Mom.

28:27 My ears were covered in silk clothes to stop the blood from flowing. And so it's with my hands that I hear your sweet voice reach me. And imagine you're here, making us all boys and girls fall in line, teaching us game after game, bursting into laughter at the puzzlement in our eyes. And we never even realize where the time goes. Mom, you cannot be in pain. You'll always be taller than me. Stronger. The end of your sorrow must come suddenly one day and land like a trace of dust on the scraps of your evening meal, on the remaining bite. New Year's Day has come and gone too many times, and even Christmas has become a strange holiday celebrated only by the sorrowful. I don't know if here is where you live, and it's still hard for

29:14 me to say whether my feet tread on ground, asphalt, or the sea. I take my cough syrup every four hours, because I'm telling you, it was just that I was cold, that was all. But not so much as a finger smudge upsets the silvery balance reflected on the glass cabinets of your kitchen. And you, at dawn, throw yourself at them with a running start, those cabinets, with your hands covered in straws, cake and wet, damp earth. Inside the drawers, the calendar angels have hidden the years beneath the good silverware that shines and slashes through the darkness. I've made a mess of my homework, and all I have to tell you lies forgotten. For centuries now, I've carried you, have not for a moment set you down. I carry

30:01 you inside a deep embrace and lull you to sleep at night, your body unweighted by nightmares. I lull you to sleep so that you'll grow up big and strong, a child of heaven devoted to love. I breathe in your smell and no one will ever, ever know, because it's all whispers, laughter, and pinches, and pureed food and a little silver spoon, and the sounds of animals and the sounds of birds. and rainy mornings through the car window with a bed of leaves on the ground on the way to school, and drool and blood and endless unspeakable beauty.

30:33 So, in the depths of my mind, I composed for your celebration. A tiny compliment, and so I offer you this poem to tell you that I love you.

31:01 There's a sandlot somewhere between the north ice field, a ten-minute walk from our house, in a land where it never gets dark. Quarter to eight, with the last cartoons of the day on TV, and us half-asleep on the couch, with crumbs clinging to our mouths. Sounds that will never be heard, stars against your windowpane. As for me, a tiny, bloody glow that breaks the absolute blue stillness. In my sleep, I think of you and love you. My mom. Now, in Papa Rabbit's warren, all his children are gathered. Among them, a kid goat, keeping safe between its teeth, and an eerie song of snow. Welcome back, dear listeners.

31:52 So.

31:53 Mata, the author of this story, sent us this about the story, Garbage Trucks at 6 a.m. Garbage Trucks was written, cannot even say inspired, after this real story happened in Philadelphia in 2009. In Greece, the garbage trucks are part of the soundscape of the towns. In Athens, there is a particular sound at dawn when they roll around the empty boulevards, revealing the loneliness of us, the sleepers, the workers, the homeless people, etc., Generally, I am particularly sensitive to the processes of waste disposal, dumping, and collection. I think that they are deeply connected to our fear of death, to our struggle to get rid of anything that reminds us of the decay. And I have also a huge respect and kindness towards cleaning workers, precisely because they are

32:40 confronted every day with everything we consider useless, trivial, and dirty. I believe that our entire existence can be read in our trash. Kostas, who translated these stories from Greek to English, sent us this. Tradutore, traditore, the Italians like to say. Translator, traitor. On good days, I can almost talk myself into thinking my betrayals small, perhaps unavoidable. These stories had me talking to myself more than usual. They're such delicate, sideways, soft-spoken, yet wild things, sketching entire worlds in a couple of sentences, then exploding them with a phrase. I was fortunate enough to get to work on them, I hope readers feel equally fortunate to have read them. And I will say, this particular episode was such an incredible amount of work

33:29 for everyone but me. I'm reading you the story. But coordinating across borders, talking to translators, talking to the author, publishers, I feel blessed that we get to read you these stories. And Hazel, who helps behind the scenes, says about these stories, I love how this writing washes over me. and I love how surprising it can be. Kostas mentioned this a little bit, and I'm really fascinated by how Mata can craft these metaphors that almost resolve, but not quite, though I still know exactly what meaning they're trying to get to.

34:03 At the end of a story, I'm still not exactly sure what happened or where we are, but I'm left with this transcendent wash of feeling. It's super powerful, well-crafted. What do I have to say about these stories? I... well, I really enjoy them or I wouldn't read them to you. And I'm particularly taken about how the first story and the last story in particular, but all of the stories get at this sense of love that is very different from most of the stories that I am presented with.

34:37 You know, there's not, I mean, like there's both a love story to what I presume is a dead child in the first story and also a love story to a mother And that's not what most of the writing that I see does. And so it touches at these emotions that a lot of media doesn't touch on. I don't know whether they're afraid to or it's out of style or it's just the media that I consume. But that makes it really beautiful and it makes it really raw in a way, right? Because it's a part of us that we're not as callous to. you know, a romantic love story. We're sort of callous too, and a writer has to work really hard to get through our callous in order to tell a transcendent love story. And these stories are different, you know? I also, I'm really

35:31 excited about the Anarchist Review of Books, and I'm really excited about translations like this. I'm really excited because we are part of a culture, and we're part of a culture that can create beautiful literature and also have this sort of like international way of communicating with each other. Like translation is a radical act. And there's this thing where more stuff is translated out of English than into English because people who don't speak the like dominant language of the world are more likely to pay attention to international stuff. And I think that specifically translating radical literature into English is is an incredibly beautiful and important idea because it so often goes the other way. The other

36:18 way also matters. Ironically, translation, especially like hand translation instead of machine translation, is such an important way to state our love for a diverse world. It's a way to state like, hey, not everyone knows every language, but people know different languages and we can access the knowledge and the ideas and the stories that are presented in these different languages. And I think that that's radical. I also think that it's really interesting that these are stories that on their surface are, well, they're about death and family and love, but they're also, it's telling that they come from what I rudely presume is an anarchist author based on the publisher. But I spent a little bit of

37:07 time in Greece around this time during these, you know, major upheavals that were happening there. And you could see how it affects all of society, right? And I think it's important that we remember that beautiful literature can come out of places where like conflict is happening, and we're involved in political conflict. And it doesn't have to necessarily just be like, here's a story I wrote about a riot, right?

37:32 Although I'll read stories about riots, that's totally fine by me. Anyway, I want to apologize if I am pronouncing some of the Greek wrong, but here are our bios. Mata Kastrisiu is an author and actor. She lives in Exarchia, Athens, but she works worldwide. You can follow her work at her website, and I'm going to just read out the spelling because it is not in English. Her website is t-r-a-u-m-e-i-n-t-r-u-m-m-e-r-n-dot-g-r.

38:05 And we'll also link it in the show notes. And, you know, you can see how her name is spelled there as well. But it is M-A-T-A-K-A-S-T-R-I-S-I-O-U, if you want to search for her. And then Kostas Kaltas is an author, translator, and critic living in Athens, Greece. His translations into Greek include works by David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Lethem, and Ishmael Reed.

38:29 His first novel, Victorious Dust, is forthcoming from ARB Editions, Anarchist Review of Books Editions. has been translated into Greek and Serbian. You can follow his work on Facebook at Kostas Kaltas, K-O-S-T-A-S, K-A-L-T-S-A-S. And he says, quote, just look for the guy hiding behind a pension book is a good way to find me. Ignore the pet service bit on the profile. I was annoyed with Meta turning me into a digital creator. These stories are from the collection Black Box, which you can get from AK Press online or request it at your local library or indie bookseller.

39:05 The poem Fete de Mer, or Mamam, which appears in A Balcony in the Sky, is originally by Michelle Boe. The translation in this volume was done by Costas Koltzis. And I'm Margaret Kiljoy, and I have other podcasts. If you found this on the Cool People feed, then you should check out It Could Happen Here. If you found this on the It Could Happen Here feed, you should check out my main show, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, where we talk about how just metal history is. And if you found this on its own feed, you can do that. If you only want to listen to Book Club, it has its own feed. You can listen to it there.

39:35 And yeah, thank you for listening this week and every week, and we'll be back next Sunday with more short fiction. Until then, fuck the fascists, solidarity cross borders, and they tried to bury us, but they didn't know we were seeds.

39:49 It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources.

40:06 Thanks for listening.