Margins
Raise Your Soul book cover
Raise Your Soul
A Personal History of Resistance
2025
First Published
4.21
Average Rating
284
Number of Pages

A captivating portrait of Yanis Varoufakis’s political awakening, told through the history of his family, from 1924 to the present. 'A gripping history of modern Greece and an unforgettable biography of an extraordinary family. Written with compassion and wit, it reads like a thriller’ BRIAN ENO When Yanis Varoufakis was eight years old, his uncle made him a model airplane out of matchsticks and cigarette papers; all he could find in his cell. Yet, to his dismay, his mother Eleni broke open the fragile gift, revealing a hidden instructions for fellow dissidents ahead of their forthcoming court martial. It was 1969 and Uncle Panayis was a political prisoner, captured and tortured for resisting the military dictatorship. Dramatic in scope and deep in feeling, Raise Your Soul is an intimate portrait of three generations caught up in the whirlwind of history. It is also a remarkable narrative spanning one hundred years, beginning in post-colonial Egypt in the 1920s, and then tracing Greece’s tumultuous century through Nazi occupation, communist resistance, civil war, Cold War fracture, fascist dictatorship, socialist revival and present-day economic crisis. At its heart are the women whose resilience, defiancé and courage inspired the visionary economist Eleni, Anna, Trisevgeni, Georgia and Danaë. Through their lives, Varoufakis not only lays bare his own political soul, but confronts the dark forces of authoritarianism that still haunt Europe and beyond, reigniting hope in all of us that we can rise once more. ‘This is not just Varoufakis’s story, but ours’ IRVINE WELSH 'Beautiful and inspiring, I couldn't put it down' ROSIE HOLT

Avg Rating
4.21
Number of Ratings
77
5 STARS
48%
4 STARS
34%
3 STARS
10%
2 STARS
6%
1 STARS
1%
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Author

Yanis Varoufakis
Yanis Varoufakis
Author · 19 books
Ioannis "Yanis" Varoufakis is a Greek-Australian economist and politician. A former academic, he has been Secretary-General of MeRA25, a left-wing political party, since he founded it in 2018. A former member of Syriza, he served as Minister of Finance from January to July 2015 under Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.
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