Her naked body and other strange stories consists of ten short stories in the tradition of fantasy literature with obvious Kafkaesque and Borgesian elements. The stories take place somewhere between reality and imagination and, despite the multiple influences, are ultimately very personal in style. In all short stories painful losses occur but the ending remains open and ambivalent. A birth in the 11th month of pregnancy, a pianist with twelve fingers, a dead uncle that “returns” to guide an ill nephew through life, a castaway who refuses to be saved, a mysterious actor and his prompter, are some of the main subjects of the book that was nominated for the best literary debut in Greece.
Photo credit: Zyranna Stoikou
Christos Asteriou was born in Athens in 1971. He studied German and Modern Greek literature at the Universities of Athens, Würzburg and Berlin. He was the head of the German department at the European Centre for Literary Translation, and he later worked as an investment consultant in a major Greek bank. He received a literature fellowship from the Berlin Academy of Arts (2013), the Fulbright Scholarship (2015) and the Berlin Senate Literary Scholarship (2020). He has published three novels and short story collection and has translated several books from German. Since 2016 he has been working as a co-writer and researcher on the documentary Queen of the Deuce (Exile Films / Storyline Entertainment). He is currently teaching at the Free University in Berlin.
Mina Radulović (Novi Sad, Serbia, 1971) is a literary translator and interpreter from Greek, Serbian and English, who has worked as a translator for the Committee of the Regions of the EE and as a project manager in the field of EU’s Town Twinning Programs, as well as of the National Book Centre of Greece (Promotion of Greek Letters Abroad, participation in book fairs and festivals) and of the European Translation Centre – Literature and Human Sciences, Athens, Greece (involved as a translation teacher, editor of APILIOTIS e-zine, responsible for the coordination of the annual Literary Translation Awards & Conference, for the annual program of the Literary Residences situated on islands Paros and Crete). M.R. also worked for the Hellenic American University, at the International Students and Programs dept. and for the American European Alliance for Education DOO Novi Sad, as well as for the Hellenic Foundation for Culture in Athens and Belgrade, in the field of the cultural programs of the Belgrade and Thessaloniki book fairs (when Greece was the country guest of honour at the 2009 Belgrade fair and Serbia at the 2012 Thessaloniki book fair). The published works translated into Serbian by M.R. include modern Greek writers like Kazancakis, Elitis, Seferis, Sikelianos, Venezis, Nolas, Varufakis, Sotakis etc. From Serbian/Croatian into Greek – Pavić, Kiš, Gatalica, Pekić, Šnajder, Srsen, Krleža, Velikić, Srbljanović etc, and many adaptations and scenarios by Nikita Milivojević and Nebojša Bradić, while from English into Greek and Serbian she signs translations of the works of John Keats, Macdara Woods, Yanis Varoufakis etc.