Ginger (Oceanida Publishing – 2002)
Vogue Greece – Excerpts from an Interview with the author.
By Katerina Asimakopoullou
The moment when others might have said ‘I made it’ Effie Araouzou abandoned all other business to devote herself to her love of words.
Katerina Asimakopoullou visited her in Cyprus to discuss her latest novel.
I have been subjected daily to various endurance tests, yet I always succumb to the temptation of looking at the author’s picture together with the biography in every new book I buy. When I received the first draft of ‘Ginger’ and started leafing through it, the cover was just a sketch. I read it all in one night, like I had done with Patrick Susskind’s ‘The Perfume’ – with which it has many similarities – without having the least idea about its author. So when I met Effie Araouzou in Nicosia, I had to hide my surprise as her bright appearance did not match the dark, obscure mood she had created for the lives of her characters.
‘Ginger’, published two weeks ago by ‘Okeanis’ Publishers editions, Araouzou third book in Greek, which she follows the journey of a soul embodied in different bodies and different ages, starting in Egypt around 3500 B.C. till the beginning of the twentieth century. The concept was suggested by chance, when she read that, at some point, a finger of a mummy had been stolen from the British Museum. ‘It made an impression on me. The finger of a mummy? Why? What could they do with it?’ Of course, I never found out if it was true that Sir William Budge supervisor of the Egyptian section, had invented this story to while his time away. The fact is that if you were to visit the British Museum, you would ascertain that the mummy named Ginger indeed has a finger missing. At the same time, I was preoccupied with the relation of the soul with the body, which are one, yet at some point the body dies while the soul, I like to hope, lives on.’ She did research for four years prior to writing ‘Ginger’ She herself has no idea how many times she visited the British Museum. ‘With what I found out I could surely write a (dissertation) (manual on embalmment” she laughs. Finally Araouzou finished the novel, since in the last few years her thoughts were motivated by literature.
Q. What did you miss in your childhood.
A. Being an only child I missed kids of my age.
Q.Is writing today for you a way of escaping reality ?
A. It’s a way of living a parallel life, a flirt with my own self, a game between reality and dream. I find the dream more interesting than reality. Which is why I make sure that magic is always present in my books.
Q. Life has no magic?
A. It has, as long as you can discover it. You need a journey to reach it, and I’m not sure it can be done without pain. I cannot say if I have achieved it, but I do know that I can now take pleasure in the solitude of which I was once so afraid of.
Q. What else have you learned from this trip to self -knowledge, which I guess is what this was about?
A. Maybe the most important lesson for me is that things are not always as important as they seem at a specific moment.. You know, in the past I used to magnify my feelings of happiness as well as my unhappiness. Now I prefer to put my feelings on ice before expressing them. Of course, this could be an impediment to the flow of my writing. But I prefer to take the time to see things from a distance.
Q. Today’s pace of life does not coincide with this view.
A. I do not like speed. I want to let time take its stride. I am even suspicious of quick success.
Q. Time does not scare you?
A. No, neither as a woman nor as a writer.
Q. The decay that time brings?
A. Time does not deteriorate the soul if handled in the right way. What can I say about the body? It’s like a suitcase which at some point starts to wear out. There’s nothing much I can do about that. If you asked me which time of my life I feel nostalgic most about, I would say none because I feel better now than at any other time.
Q. Is writing more a matter of discipline or of inspiration?
A. It’s mostly a matter of hard work and discipline. Inspiration comes through solitude, because choosing to become a writer is in a sense, like turning your back to life.
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Q As all points to your belief in reincarnation what were you in your previous life?
A. I was told once that I was a priestess in Egypt and that I lived during the time of Atlantis. Maybe the reason behind my fear for earthquakes. But I am not concerned by what I might have been in the past. For the time I enjoy the feeling of the passage of time. I try to make the most of it every day through my writing.
Katerina Asimakopoulou is a journalist in the Greek newspaper TO VIMA and she has since written her own book. The above is an interview with Efterpie Araouzou for the Greek Vogue in June 2002
Ginger has received the National Prize of Literature of Cyprus. 1992- 1993
It has been translated from the Greek to English by Irene Noel Baker. But never published.
