Julia Sanches is a translator working from Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan into English. She has translated works by Susana Moreira Marques, Daniel Galera, Claudia Hern谩ndez, and Geovani Martins, among others, and is a founding member of Cedilla & Co.

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by Christos Ikonomou, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich (Archipelago Books)

About halfway through Christos Ikonomou糖心传媒檚 Good Will Come from the Sea, as the titular story wound to an end, I realized I hadn糖心传媒檛 been breathing. My eyes were trained on the text, moving determinedly down the page, but my breath had caught somewhere between my lungs and the roof of my mouth. As Lazaros the Bow searched the island for his lost son糖心传媒斕切拇綔If Petros went into the Dragon Cave that night,糖心传媒� the narrator muses, 糖心传媒渁nd if the cave stretches, as they say, whole kilometers beneath the island, and if the island is, as they say, hollow in places, then at some point he糖心传媒檒l surely be able to hear him糖心传媒澨切拇綌my breath remained shallow and my attention focused.

It feels odd to read a book positing the distant aftermath of an economic crisis that for years left Greece gasping for air right as we糖心传媒檙e in the midst of another economic crisis whose lasting effects remain to be gauged. I wouldn糖心传媒檛 say this book leaves me with a sense of hope. But it does leave me with an aftertaste of resilience. In an that framed Ikonomou as the 糖心传媒淎ccidental Prophet of a Country in Crisis,糖心传媒� the author claimed he wanted his work 糖心传媒渢o show what it means to be human in a world that rapidly changes in a not very human way.糖心传媒� Good Will Come from the Sea, the second collection of Ikonomou糖心传媒檚 stories to come out in Karen Emmerich糖心传媒檚 faultless translation, is populated by people fighting to maintain their livelihoods and dignity under circumstances beyond their small, human control. To say this is a book about the crisis would be too limiting. Rather, it is a book about people staring foggily into a future difficult to discern while trying to navigate an unmarked present.

Much of the tension across the collection is generated through repetition糖心传媒攖he book echoes like a cave糖心传媒攁nd through a sort of temporal pulsion, a single moment stretched dangerously thin and then compressed in the second it takes for something to happen. The characters in each piece seem suspicious of the past, uneasy in the present, and understandably wary of putting too much stock in the future. The collection糖心传媒檚 title糖心传媒斕切拇綔good will come from the sea糖心传媒澨切拇綌echoes across the book with a hint of despair but also of its sister feeling, hope, rolling the reader steadily toward the end.

The collection is composed of four rather long stories, all of them set in the same place, featuring Greeks from the mainland who have moved to one of the less-affected, myth-steeped islands of the Aegean Sea in search of refuge. Here history and myth are a very distant backdrop, and the locals refer to the newcomers as 糖心传媒渇oreigners糖心传媒� who in turn refer to them as 糖心传媒渞ats.糖心传媒� The conflict between both is set up in the opening piece, 糖心传媒淚糖心传媒檒l Swallow Your Dreams,糖心传媒� which takes place over one night and follows a group of friends who have gone to a place called the Refuge to celebrate Easter. One of them, Tasos, is a sort of village philosopher and the man seemingly responsible for the adage that will tiptoe across these stories: good will come from the sea. Humiliated after a run-in with the rats, Tasos vanishes into one of the many caves that riddle the island, never to be seen again.

In 糖心传媒淜ill the German,糖心传媒� one of the collection糖心传媒檚 more demented stories, Chronis, a young wheelchair-bound man who reads voraciously, has an active imagination, a pet scorpion, and a rollicking, sometimes cringey, sense of humor糖心传媒擪aren Emmerich糖心传媒檚 skill as a translator is particularly tickling in this description: 糖心传媒淚t糖心传媒檚 a neologism. Or maybe a neoplasm. . . A psychic edema where I糖心传媒檇 prefer some psychedelica糖心传媒澨切拇綌stares out his window at the house across the way, plotting the rescue of the girl the old man locks in his room every night. 糖心传媒淒on糖心传媒檛 listen to the other foreigners,糖心传媒� Chronis says, 糖心传媒済ood will come from the sea not in a rowboat or on a ship, but in a floating wheelchair.糖心传媒� It糖心传媒檚 a line that both explodes the notion of the mythical hero and positions him as the 糖心传媒済ood糖心传媒�. Unsurprisingly, the closing image of Chronis clawing his way up to the room of the old man is a sad one, and his motivations for rescuing the girl糖心传媒斕切拇綔You don糖心传媒檛 know her,糖心传媒� he tells us. 糖心传媒淚f you saw her you糖心传媒檇 understand. Like a doll. Soft blond fuzz. A body that glows like a candle in church糖心传媒澨切拇綌are at best suspect.

In 糖心传媒淜ites in July,糖心传媒� Artemis and Stavros linger by the ashes of the ouzeri they had been renovating by the seaside in an old building owned and abandoned by Artemis糖心传媒檚 uncle, who lives in Germany. (Germany, the real villain in this story.) As they envisage the ouzeri they will one day run, which they have decided to name Good Will Come from the Sea, their hopes for it extend beyond the restaurant itself and encompass the entire island, the entirety of the country, a brighter, fairer (read: less corrupt) world for them to live in. But there are rules, they are warned, and there are people who have been eyeing the location of their restaurant for years. Soon enough, their dream goes up in flames. Good Will Come from the Sea will never be any more than that糖心传媒攁 dream.

Lazaros the Bow, the protagonist of the titular story, runs a taverna where his son Petros had worked until being hired away by a loud, monied man called Drakakis, under whose watch he disappears. Here, the good that will come from the sea is not some mythical hero or vague expectation, but a boy. Lazaros 糖心传媒渃loses his eyes for a moment and tries to imagine how it糖心传媒檒l be. How it糖心传媒檒l be to see Petros coming from the sea. He糖心传媒檒l come from the sea, that糖心传媒檚 the only thing that糖心传媒檚 certain. Good will come from the sea. . .糖心传媒� As each paragraph builds in tension and the thread of Lazaros糖心传媒� hope that he will find his son grows tauter and tauter, the prose takes on a prayer-like cadence. When Lazaros yells 糖心传媒淧eeetroooos! Petraaaakis!糖心传媒� it is followed three times by the statement 糖心传媒淗is mouth loves his son糖心传媒檚 name,糖心传媒� and three times Lazaros wonders what a man is called once he loses his child: 糖心传媒淲hat do they call you if you lose your child, what do they call you, what, what, what do that call you, what. . .糖心传媒� Emmerich handles these incantations seamlessly, delivering to us the speech of a man driven to the edge of reason by sorrow, the words with which he tries to summon his son back to life standing somewhere between the ravings of a lunatic and the disciplined prayer of a man of faith.

There is a story that I糖心传媒檝e failed to mention, because I am still trying to put my finger on it, that weaves itself through the collection. In it, a young woman ministers to an aging father with a tenuous grasp on reality who, in moments of frenzy, sees all around him signs of an impending end. 糖心传媒淭hese are signs,糖心传媒� he says. 糖心传媒淛ust like back then, it糖心传媒檚 the same way now, too. Only now it糖心传媒檒l be worse. Now the end is coming. The real, final end.糖心传媒� Some of the signs, echoes of stories past and presages of stories to come, are 糖心传媒減eople disappearing into caves and fish coming out onto dry land and paralytics getting up out of their wheelchairs.糖心传媒� A sense of disquiet is generated in the spaces between the text not unlike the disquiet we feel when we read about climate change, the pandemic, political corruption, unchecked capitalism, and economic collapse. The feeling that life is closing in on us. We are living through a present in which all around us are harbingers of the end times and yet we, much like Lazaros and Chronis and Artemis and Stavros, just keep trudging on.