And a Wake-Up

De: Pavlos Pamborides

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

A young conscript stationed on the divided streets of Nicosia begins to hear a voice.

It does not sound like a thought. It does not feel like imagination. It is present — steady, articulate, and impossible to place.

At first, the voice seems controlled. Almost reasonable. It speaks of violence, faith, blood, and the obligations men inherit long before they choose them. As the pressure of military life intensifies, the voice grows more intimate, more insistent — until silence itself becomes suspect.

When the soldier finally goes AWOL, seeking escape, he does not find freedom. Instead, he drifts deeper into a landscape shaped by unresolved guilt, inherited violence, and the unburied dead of a fractured land. What begins as flight becomes confrontation, as personal collapse opens onto forces far older — and far more relentless.

In fewer than 100 pages, And a Wake-Up is a stark, unsettling descent into the psychological and moral aftermath of war. Moving between realism and allegory, Pavlos Pamborides exposes the hidden continuities between nation, religion, masculinity, and collective memory — and asks what it means to come of age inside a history that refuses to stay silent.

Spare, brutal, and deeply human, And a Wake-Up is a modern parable about obedience, madness, and the cost of awakening.

Shortlisted for the Cyprus National Prize for Literature (2020)