Writings of a Rootless Cosmopolitan: Short Stories from Around the World

The stories in the were mostly written in Zakynthos, an island in the Ionian Sea, near Ithaca, the island where thousands of years ago, Odysseus finally came home after decades of wandering. Zakynthos is also the writer's home after a lifetime of wandering in the world. The stories are set in real places, and most of the characters and incidents are based on real events. Each story reflects the human condition. Taken as a whole, they express the many aspects of the human condition. "The Story of Stasa." A modern Belgian who spends his summers writing in a remote house on the Greek island of Zakynthos has as a friend and neighbor, an elderly woman, a farmer who has a daily routine that is centuries, perhaps millennia old. "The Two Jews of Zakynthos." This is the story of a Jewish-Zakynthiot couple who are among the hundreds of Jews saved from the Nazi occupation by the singular bravery of the Island's mayor and Orthodox bishop. "The Lost Icon of Anafonitria." Murder, theft, and horror in paradise. "The Voice of His Uncle." The words of a long-dead homophobic uncle leads a migrant worker to murder his lover, a Greek monk who is the first true friend he ever had. "Lale and Murat." Once a brilliant school head, now a homeless alcoholic; a beautiful and intelligent woman; and a selfish, criminal businessman all have their lives turned upside down by the strange transmigration of souls. "Rudie and the Curacao Devil." A small international school in Curacao is plagued by a serial rapist who lurks in the neighborhood. A young headmaster from Texas, a Sephardic rabbi, and a mafioso, who owns a cleaning service in Otrabanda, come up with a solution of questionable morality. "Moonlight and Blood on the Temple Floor." Three American teenagers, who are misfits and outcasts in the ex-pat community in Taiwan, form a close friendship. For the first time, their lives are filled with meaning and intimacy. Then one night something goes hideously wrong. "The Reverend Roosevelt Gilstrap Buys a Church." In a small Texas city in the 1970s racism, moderated only by the stupidity of the city's governing aldermen, stifles the progress and cultural self-expression of the black community. Then a black pastor, a Greek American police chief from a neighboring town, and an English teacher, a newcomer, concoct what seems like a practical joke but which has liberating consequences.