Songs from Dinosaki's Jukebox: An Island Arabesque

Songs from Dinosaki's Jukebox spins the lurid interconnected tales of modern day travelers and their sometimes dark, sometimes hilarious, personal encounters with the ancient spirits and mythological creatures still haunting the Greek Cycladic Islands; vestiges and echoes of the past lying just below the western world's sunny, tourist-agency schmaltz. Self-exiled after the collapse of his stateside marriage; at loose ends after being fired from his oil company job in the Persian Gulf, Andy Alytis, the book's hero find's himself stranded on an obscure island with seven English-speaking backpackers. On the island of Yria, Andy encounters a jewish American expatriate exiled there for thirty years. At Andy's instigation, the travelers contract together with the cunning seeress, Sophia, to divine, for each, a hidden truth using songs from a dusty jukebox in the corner of Dinosaki's cafenion. Outside the cafenion, Andy watches Santorini's threatening volcanic column on the horizon, while inwardly struggling to resist the charms of one of the back-packers, the nymph-like "Mina, with eyes like stars". The first "song" "Manoulis Steals a Kiss" is an Austin Chronicle short-story prize winner. Cover art by American painter-expatriate Brett Taylor.

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