Foreign rights

Smyrna, 1887. Katina is a cunning, ruthlesse Smyrniote. In her native slums she meets Attarti, a Turkish woman, who initiates her into the practice of magic. A witch knows no hindrance or boundary and Katina vows to excel. Love potions, lucky charms, revenge filters and a host of magical recipes prove to be infallible. Katina manages to get herself four husbands, each wealthier and more powerful than the previous. Rising higher and higher in the ranks of Smrynian society, Katina sticks her nose into everybody’s business, managing splendidly a variety of lucrative endeavours –tobacco trade, dealings with banks– leading to the day when she has the whole of Smyrna under her thumb. Her writings and magical spells are to be found, a century later, inside a dusty old trunk in her descendant’s –the book’s protagonist’s– home in Aegina, Greece. A modern myth of a novel, a top bestseller in the Greek book market (nearly 400.000 copies sold to this day!), gaining even wider popularity in its numerous translations: Italian (Edizioni e/o), German (Suhrkamp/Insel Verlag), English (Europa Editions), Turkish (Literatür Yayincilik), Dutch (Uitgeverji Wereldbibliotheek), Spanish (Editorial Berenice), Lithuanian (Vagapublishers), Bulgarian (Vessela Lutzkanova Publishing House), and Hungarian (Gondolat Kiado).