Children of Good Families is a collection of previously unpublished short stories by Loukas Kastanakis, written between 1942 and 1956.
The author vividly recreates the world of his time—from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century—the places where he lived, from pre-revolutionary Russia, Constantinople, Paris, and Berlin to the places of his exile in Greece, as well as the people he encountered throughout the odyssey of his life, focusing on their passions, anxieties, hardships, values, and hopes.
Sharp-witted, humorous, and optimistic, the “cosmopolitan” Kastanakis writes stories of enduring relevance, populated by characters who seem strikingly contemporary, while satirizing the very flaws and afflictions that have burdened the Greek people for centuries.
