panopoulos

SALVATION BECKONS

Book Four of THE BRAIDS OF KAMINARI Quartet

An ode to inner transformation that defies all logic. Kostas is now named Stephanos Raphaelophoros and is a fount of wisdom and insight. Makarios the Governor has become more human, even a little likeable. And the decades-long vendetta finally ends in truly unexpected fashion.

Did events in Kaminari affect the whole world?

＂What do you think of the story that Agios Antonios trapped the devil in a bottle?＂ asked Makarios.

＂The devil can be anywhere people make room for him,＂ said Petros, quietly.

＂But since Agios (Saint) Antonios trapped him in a bottle, he’s not as free as he would be otherwise.＂

＂How can that be? If he’s in a bottle, how can he be anywhere else?＂

＂It’s a mystery,＂ said Petros, as if that was all the answer needed

Book One, Vendetta In Arcadia, tells of a blood feud that would not end, how a single spontaneous act of violence brought an abrupt end to a profound love story and started a chain reaction of extraordinary events.

Book 2, Shifting Souls, continues the story of Kostas and Vasili, two young men from warring clans, one the injured and the other the perpetrator. Yet both are victims and both in need of intervention from the world beyond.

THE BRAIDS OF KAMINARI is a deeply human saga of interwoven lives in the foothills of beautiful and bountiful Arcadia in the late-1800s. Jaw-dropping other-worldly happenings are seamlessly integrated with the lives of the rich variety of memorable characters, bringing 19th century Greece vividly to life, while stretching the limits of our beliefs.

EDITORIAL REVIEW

The interwoven stories of many characters takes place in a remote mountain area of Arcadia, Greece, around the village of Kaminari in a period in which an isolated way of life, which has prevailed for centuries, is still intact and pretty much untouched by the modern world. The world the book depicts is a stark and archaic one of blood feuds between families, passionate relationships, and a sense of closeness to the supernatural world, a world where Angels and Demons and natural forces interact with the life of human beings.
- Harris Smart, MA.
Australian writer and TV Producer and former Fellow in Creative Writing at Stanford University. Harris is an award winning short story writer and has written seven books including the novel, Passion Play, and the biography Tom Bass Totem Maker.

Storyteller is the term that best describes Greek-American John Panopoulos, his life and his works, although insufficient to encapsulate such a wide and complex character. John’s stories have taken many shapes: poetry, short stories, sculpture - a favorite medium - various forms of visual arts, bedtime tales, good conversations over coffee and of course the Braids of Kaminari Quartet.

Each piece of artwork tells a story and is deeply rooted in his spiritual and philosophical values. He found those values through the spiritual movement of Subud, a movement rooted in an inner experience which embraces all cultures and religions.

John made only one visit to the land of his roots. It was just as he had always seen it in his mind’s eye. In the wake of that journey, deeply affected and inspired by the testimonies and folktales, landscapes and faces he found there, he picked up his writers pen and wove the Braids of Kaminari.

The Braids of Kaminari quartet reflects John’s being in so many ways. It is a treasure trove of wisdom and humor, personalities and contrasts, a masterful dance of love and hate, light and darkness, the spiritual and the physical, pushing the boundary between truth and fantasy.