Book Launch

To be launched by Tim Colebatch (Economics Editor, The Age), Christos Tsiolkas (Author, The Slap) Arnold Zable (Author, Jewels and Ashes).

Andrea Demetriou’s poems of loss and longing are possessed with a fiery desire to recall and live again in the world she was forced to abandon in 1974 when the Turks occupied northern Cyprus, wrote Michael Haag, historian and author of Alexandria City of Memory.

Although Andrea was raised in Port Melbourne, which she adores, she has never really left Cyprus. As a child she refused to abandon her birthplace telling her parents that “If everyone runs away, the Turkish army will take the whole Island”. Seen through the eyes of a child, the book addresses the Cypriot issue, which thirty-five years on still remains unresolved. As Andrea stated in an interview on Greek national television, “For us the issue is still pending, as long as the Turkish soldiers stand at the dividing line with guns pointed at us, as long as we are still searching and still burying missing people, the issue is as immediate as it was in 1974. Neither money nor time has erased the pain that can still be seen in people’s eyes.

Her poems beautifully capture a lost period of innocence but more importantly they give a voice to the issue still unsolved and motivation to work towards uniting the divided island. She teaches us the importance of remembering so as not to forget.