“Ithaca is not a destination, it’s an eternal journey. And this concerns each one of us. Because we all experience our own Odysseys and have our own Ithacas,” declared former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras during his discussion on Bookvoice – The podcast, with Aimilios Cheilakis and Spilios Lambropoulos, while describing his book as a “reload” rather than “branding.”
Regarding his book, Tsipras noted: “But it also has to do with politics. It has to do with the Left, with society, with social struggles, with the evolution of the world. It doesn’t stop, this never stops. In this sense, the title I chose has philosophical value. I chose it six months ago, having structured the book and having realized that there is an allegorical field of everything we experienced as a collective adventure and the adventure that every person has while fighting, claiming, hoping, dreaming and conquering some of those dreams.”
Reflecting on the past, Tsipras emphasized: “When I decided to resign, I had in mind that the time would come when I must speak. Because notice that everyone has spoken about this dramatic period of modern Greek history – many foreigners and Greeks have spoken.”
Alexis Tsipras on “Ithaca”: “In the book I engage in self-criticism, but I also criticize”
“This book has a character of duty towards history, but it also has a character of catharsis, self-knowledge, re-approaching truth and events. It was a, how should I put it, not branding but reload – I recharged my batteries through writing these events and putting my own truth on paper,” the former Prime Minister stressed.
“I don’t hide that my book has a particularity. And the particularity is that no former Prime Minister writes in present tense. Everyone writes in past tense. I engage in self-criticism, but I also criticize,” he added, making his own assessment.
“I haven’t left anything out… I admit that from the first draft to the last there has been editing, mainly not with an eye to the future, but with an eye to trying to be as objective as possible and as little unfair as possible, because you cannot be completely unfair to people and events. For this reason the book was written once, twice, and three times, while there was an effort from July until today. I’ve seen it several times so that every word represents me and is as close to the truth as possible,” he continued.
“For me, this entire writing process had a character of redemption, catharsis. So therapeutic, one might say, of self-knowledge. And yes, indeed the narrative part, when it enters into dialogues and attempts to transfer the experience to text, has a certain charm,” Alexis Tsipras concluded when speaking about the writing experience.
