A duet of provocative novellas that examine contemporary Greek identity, translated by one of the foremost experts in Greek literature From esteemed Greek writer Michel Fais comes a duet of novellas that explore the stories we choose to tell about the lives we pretend to live. In these stories, positioned at the fractured heart of Greek postmodernism, Fais returns to his signature themes of mourning, death, and absence: "the permanently open wound in my narrative." Aegypius monachus is a semi-autobiographical snapshot of a man roaming the streets of Athens, reflecting on his tumultuous marriage and the childhood roots of his failure at love. Lady Cortisol dramatizes a conversation between one man and one woman, highlighting the miscommunications and mixed signals that inevitably arise in dialogue with the other. Ironic and bitter, these staccato novellas explore the ways in which we sabotage our rare chances at love, plunging into the interior of the mind and exposing the things we cannot say aloud.