The fifth in the order book, of the appreciated author Panayotis Cacoyannis, Finger of an Angel,
is being released from the editions Amazon in paper form and in E-book.
Psychological, Magical, Mad, Lily’s journey on a long winding road and beyond
After a loved-up adventure in a wood in North London, sixty-odd-year-old Lily drives off in her Classic Mercedes and takes a wrong turn. The day is unbearably hot, and the snazzy car’s air-con is broken, blowing out hot air instead of cold. Lily follows the meandering road in a state of dehydration, and experiences a series of encounters with angels and demons and ghosts from the past.
As time begins to travel backwards, Lily knows that very soon she will find her way back to the city. But even when eventually she does, events nearer home seem to mirror her encounters on the long winding road that disappeared.
Panayotis Cacoyannis
His time now exclusively devoted to writing, The Dead of August was his first novel, a contemporary satire set in London, where he lives. His own experiences while working in the city as an artist, together with the colorful relationships of many of his friends, provided Panayotis with a wealth of material to draw on. Surprisingly all his friends are still talking to him, and none of them are planning to sue him. As well as receiving a starred Kirkus review, The Dead of August was named to Kirkus Reviews’ “Best Books of 2015”.
Also set in modern-day London, Bowl of Fruit (1907) tells the story of a man with a fantastical talent, and of his epic, twenty-four hour journey with a beautiful ghost-writer who knows more about his past than he does. Calling it “a magically original story” and “an incredible read”, IndieReader named Bowl of Fruit (1907) one of its “Best Indie Books of 2015”.
“Relieved, complicated, and strengthened by its trenchant observations of horrible people, along with black humor…” (Kirkus Reviews), POLK, HARPER & WHO is another contemporary story of complicated friendships and family relationships, and ultimately of the triumph of imperfect London love within imperfect London lives.
London 1969. While men are walking on the moon, a series of dramatic events threaten to have lasting repercussions for Jane and the people she loves… In another starred review, and naming it one of their “Indie Best Books of the Month” for June 2018, and then one of their “Best Books of 2018”, Kirkus Reviews have acclaimed The Madness of Grief as a “richly complicated, and deeply engaging coming-of-age tale.” Lightened by a touch of Panayotis’ familiar dark humour, “the story moves rapidly, contains a genuine mystery, and is thoroughly entertaining.” Casey Dorman – Lost Coast Review
Psychological, Magical, Mad, Panayotis’ fifth book is another London story of a journey on a long winding road and beyond. Describing the writing as “intentionally disorienting and unnervingly addictive”, Kirkus Reviews judged Finger of an Angel an “exceptional novel”.
For the moment at least, Panayotis has no plans (not to mention the energy or any trace of talent) to embark on a fourth career… Aside from reading and writing, his favorite pastime is going to the movies, and ever since his friend/therapist/barber recommended The Sopranos, he has also discovered good TV. He travels to Cyprus often, to visit family and be near the sea.
If anyone would like to get in touch with him, there is a contact email address for Panayotis on his website.
KIRKUS REVIEW
A grieving mother embarks on a mind-expanding journey in this novel.
Lily, or “Lily the Pink,” as she is known at “naked yoga,” is a 60-something woman who is a member of the “strictly-by-invitation-only” website “come-to-woody.com.” The site allows “perfectly respectable” professionals to meet for anonymous sexual encounters in a “secret little wood somewhere north of Hampstead Heath,” London. She has a strained relationship with Gemma, her 29-year-old daughter, who “doesn’t approve of” her lifestyle. And yet elements of Lily’s hedonism are linked to her first child, Tommy, who died at 8 after slipping out of the hands of his irritated father, Frank, at bathtime and suffering a fatal fall. During one of her ventures to Hampstead Heath, the air-conditioning on Lily’s classic Mercedes fails. In the heat, she begins to experience strange phenomena. She sees her dead son in the eyes of a fly she identifies as the angel Ithuriel. She later encounters two men, one of whom she instantly recognizes as “the devil incarnate.” All the while, Lily consults with her alter ego, Bella, nicknamed the “Unexploded Bomb.” As in his previous novels, Cacoyannis (The Madness of Grief, 2018, etc.) deftly builds complex psychological portraits of his characters. Here, his fiction employs magic realism to both blur and sharpen Lily’s shifting mindscape. As she sits in the suffocating heat of the car, her altering vision is at first understandable: “Trickles of sweat had already found their way into her eyes, but she could see. The slight blurriness—the effect was of an old-fashioned photograph fuzzy from the grain of excessive enlargement.” Aberrations in her vision later become the “colourful brushstrokes” of a migraine aura, but she also inexplicably sees, behind a fly’s “ruby domes,” unmistakable eyes far more piercing than hers, belonging to her dead son. The author delights in leading readers to the unsteady territory between the possible and the impossible. His writing is intentionally disorienting and unnervingly addictive as readers grapple to make sense of two or more separate realities sewn seamlessly together. Cacoyannis is known for his introspective protagonists, but in this exceptional novel he delves even deeper, excavating the darkest corners of the psyche.
An erudite, richly layered, and unsettling psychological tale.
For readers’ reviews and purchase: https://www.amazon.com/dp/