Tasos Leivaditis' Triptych

Collected here are the three poetry books with which one of Greece's finest writers, Tasos Leivaditis, made his literary debut in 1952-53. Greece was at this time emerging out of the devastating destruction of World War II and the subsequent civil war (1946-49). Leivaditis, on the side of the defeated leftists in the civil conflict, paid for his political affiliation by being exiled to concentration camps on various islands for more than three years. Upon his release in 1951, he was to publish in quick succession three remarkable volumes of poetry which draw upon his experiences of violence and persecution, but which are framed by a broader commitment to justice and freedom, love and peace. The three books were immediate successes, and continue to be widely read and discussed in Greece today. Now, for the first time, they are made available to an English-reading audience, who are sure to find in the depth and intensity of Leivaditis' verses a compelling witness not only to past terrors and tragedies but also to the irrepressible desire to vindicate life and love, because 'this star is for all of us.'