Zourgos, Isidoros. 2025. Câteva nopți și încă una. Trans. by Ana-Maria Lucescu. Curtea Veche. curteaveche.ro/p/cateva-nopti-si-inca-una

In 1909, the dethroned Sultan Abdul-Hamid II was exiled to Thessaloniki and imprisoned in an astonishing villa. For a few nights, he will tell his life story to a little girl, and an eleven-year-old boy will listen to him secretly… Seventy years later, to the few nights of 1909 will be added another night – or, rather, an entire life concentrated in the duration of a single night. Moreover, in the turbulent 20th century, the nights were very long, and the dawn was often late in appearing.

With a love story as its common thread, the novel Câteva nopți și încă una (A Few Nights and yet Another One) recounts the adventure of Lefteris Zevgos, in search of wealth and happiness, bringing back to life the Exohes neighborhood – a fascinating place located on the outskirts of Thessaloniki – and telling the story of a world extinguished forever, but which the author manages to evoke tenderly and nostalgically.

It is also a self-reflective book, because, beyond the main narrative thread, it questions the act of creation, meditating, behind the curtain, on the sterility of writing, on failures and passions. In other words, we are dealing with a novel that looks at itself in the mirror. But, above all, it speaks of the unhealable existential wound that the 20th century – the most disturbing of centuries – has left behind.