
In her much-anticipated debut novel in English, Greek author and world-class conductor Stamatia Karampini brilliantly unravels a mythological archetype against the backdrop of the modern classical music industry. A six-year-old girl from Crete is frightened when she spots her own name inside a book of mythology: ARIADNE. Despite being reassured it is just fiction, during the next thirty years, Ariadne's life continuously reflects the myth—like the moon mirrored in a rain puddle on the asphalt. Her Ulyssean journey from Crete to Germany, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Russia and the UK is marked by an immigrant's infinite loneliness, the ebb and flow of memory, waves of passion, desire, regret, shame and yearning for an unrealized dream. All the while overt sexism obscures reality and gradually fragments her identity. Until one day in Stockholm, she crosses paths with a familiar soul: a fallen, self-exiled "Olympian god" in need of help.