A transporting good-humored and revealing account of Greecersquos dire troubles reported from the mountain villages idyllic islands and hardscrabble streets that define the country todayIn recent years small Greece often associated with ancient philosophers and marble ruins whitewashed villages and cerulean seas has been at the center of a debt crisis that has sown economic and social ruin spurred panic in international markets and tested Europersquos decades-old project of forging a closer union In The Full Catastrophe James Angelos makes sense of contrasting images of Greece a nation both romanticized for its classical past and castigated for its dysfunctional present With vivid character-driven narratives and engaging reporting that offers an immersive sense of place he brings to life some of the causes of the countryrsquos financial collapse and examines the changes some hopeful and others deeply worrisome emerging in its aftermath A small rebellion against tax authorities breaks out on a normally serene Aegean island A mayor from a bucolic northern Greek village is gunned down by the municipal treasurer An aging leftist hero of the Second World War fights to win compensation from Germany for the wartime occupation A once marginal group of neo-Nazis rises to political prominence out of a ramshackle Athens neighborhood The Full Catastrophe goes beyond the transient coverage in the daily headlines to deliver an enduring and absorbing portrait of modern Greece.
