I am an award-winning writer and editor living in London. Aside from books, I write occasional shorter pieces and have recently included photography in my work. For the last few years I’ve been working on a history of Cyprus, published by Bloomsbury.
THE USONIAN: What inspired you to write Cypria? ALEX CHRISTOFI: I always knew I wanted to write about a book about Cyprus. For a long time, I assumed it would be a novel. I started out writing fiction, and I imagined this amazing star-crossed lovers plot set around the 1974 invasion, which would help bring general readers … Continue reading
How and when did you find out about Varosha, and what do you find interesting about it? I remember when I was younger, being taken to a lookout post in the south east of Cyprus. There was a long telescope that pointed not at the sky, but at an empty city. I was told this was the … Continue reading
1. Cypria is a beautiful exploration of Cyprus’ history and its unique place in Europe, but it’s also a personal story for you as a British-Cypriot. You mention in the introduction it’s something you’ve long wanted to write about. When did you first get the idea for a book like this? Did it change as you were … Continue reading
Dostoevsky, it must be said, was no saint. He was famously cantankerous; he had at least one affair during his unhappy first marriage; he was also ruinously addicted to roulette. But he had a brilliant mind, at ease with contradiction, and was determined to use literature to pursue the moral consequences of the ideas that … Continue reading
The world is beginning to catch up with Mary Gaitskill. In the UK, there has been renewed interest following Serpent’s Tail’s 2019 publication of her 15,000 word New Yorker story, ‘This is Pleasure’, as a slim standalone volume last year,[1] followed in 2020 by the publication of her Granta essay ‘Lost Cat’ in an equally … Continue reading
It has been a year without micro-expressions. Those little momentary flickers across someone’s face that tell you everything, absolutely everything. So, mediated by a screen, you blunder on, or you nod heavily, willing your eyebrows and the creases around your eyes to do more work. You stoop to chat through your twelve-inch window like a … Continue reading
One of the most illuminating curiosities to have emerged from the study of George Eliot’s early writing is the amount of time she spent engaging with the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. She began her life of letters as Marian Evans, translating David Strauss’s The Life of Jesus, which owes a debt to Spinoza, while still in her twenties. … Continue reading
Alex Christofi 