The Wrestler and the Dervish

A geographical line unites Dionysis, the lonely dervish of Athens, with the Turkish wrestler of Andrianoupolis, the neighbourhoods of Istanbul with the palaestrae of the frontiers. A young, female photographer is the first to fall madly in love with the wrestler when she sees him fight on the rings of the Macedonian funfairs; but she is not the only one. At the threshold of 21st century married men are still disappearing in their quest for mysticism, while Christos, a professor of Balkan studies, using history as a tool, is trying to get over sexual and racial identities through the interpretation of secret yearnings and historical messages. A bold novel of sexual obsession, a complex and enigmatic canvas with elements of social thriller with a large and contradictory geographical range from the East to the West with no exoticism whatsoever. The Wrestler and the Dervish is a novel about the paradox and the different, the fight of the body and the soul and of love with restlessness.