The second half of November will see the release of Alexis Tsipras’ book, with Gutenberg publishing house making the official announcement that the work will bear the title “Ithaka.” According to information released, Alexis Tsipras’ book will feature 11+1 chapters and will cover the 2015-19 period, developments after 2019 and the SYRIZA crisis, while also addressing the future, presenting the former prime minister’s “vision” for “the Left and the country.”
The announcement for Alexis Tsipras’ book
Our publishing house has the joy and honor to announce the publication of a book that is awaited with justified interest by readers and has occupied public attention long before reaching bookstore shelves. This is the book by former prime minister Alexis Tsipras titled ITHAKA, which will be released in the second half of November.
Alexis Tsipras records with unique power the events that shook Greece, as well as Europe, in 2015-2019. The brutality of creditors, plans to eject the country from the European Union, closed banks, the referendum, meetings with foreign leaders like Merkel, Hollande, Putin, reactions from the then-opposition, the agonizing efforts of the Greek government to free the country from the spiral of memoranda, transform the narrative into a political thriller.
Simultaneously, events are rendered and dramatically colored by the personal, confessional but also self-critical perspective of the author, who was the youngest prime minister in Greek history. Negotiation strategy and conflicts with creditors, internal upheavals, and critical dilemmas crystallized into decisions are described without embellishment or pretense, giving the book the character of a gripping narrative that takes the form of a historical document.
With literary vividness, the author’s childhood and adolescent years are described, his radical politicization within the lines of KNE and the Left when the world was changing with the fall of the wall, his rise to leadership of Synaspismos and SYRIZA, his entry into Maximos Mansion.
This is a captivating narrative, in whose 11+1 chapters the reader will encounter the truth, documented with papers, meeting minutes and dramatic dialogues with all the leaders of the era, and will understand Alexis Tsipras’ thoughts and concerns then, as well as his critical view today of that period. Additionally, they will share the values, paths and conditions that shaped both the author himself and the country’s course. They will find answers to the how and why, beyond the distortion that truth has suffered from recent years’ propaganda.
They will also find answers about developments after 2019. About the how and why that led to SYRIZA’s crisis, which evolved from a small protest party into a major governing party, won the battle to free the country from bankruptcy constraints, but lost the battle with internal pathologies and itself.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly for today’s citizen looking toward the future, Alexis Tsipras’ ITHAKA is not a book about the past, but a declaration of hope and prospect for the future. Every event, every revelation, every critical and self-critical assessment is not treated by the author as material for archiving yesterday, but as subject matter for reflection on today and tomorrow. As an opportunity for him to reflect, as well as those who still persist in the vision of a just Greece, not simply on “what we did,” but on what “we should do.” As a work that wants to and comes to add yesterday’s energy to today’s engine.
The look toward the future runs throughout the entire book. The Prespa Agreement, foreign policy of national sovereignty and peace, small and large battles, some lost and others won, steps forward as well as steps backward, in the author’s view constitute not only subjects for reflection and experience. But also a field of encounter for those who understand that what is necessary today, perhaps more than any other moment in the post-dictatorship era, is a movement “from below,” which alone can give material substance to a prospect of justice and progress.
In the final extensive chapter, Alexis Tsipras summarizes these thoughts about the future. A vision for the Left and the country, because, as he writes himself, “a people that stops dreaming of better is ready to accept worse.”
