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Q: What does the title mean--Godquake: Life on the Edge?

 

A: “Godquake” is an earthquake--a fatefully-timed earthquake that the villagers blame on God.  But it’s also a metaphor for an unforeseen event in a person’s life that changes their view of life irrevocably--whether positive or negative. “Life on the Edge” refers to the village itself, which sits near the edge of a cliff on the slopes of Mount Olympus. For over 5,000 years, this village has existed, persisted, and kept itself apart from the rest of the world.  But slowly the cliff is eroding, and the village will eventually fall over the edge. And at the same time the village also moves closer the edge of normalcy, ready to fall into the modern world, as technology slowly pulls everyone and everything closer together into one world.

 

 So, “Godquake: Life on the Edge,” is about villagers fending off the inevitability of extinction, whether from physical erosion, or from erosion of their culture.

 

Q: Is Godquake: Life on the Edge a religious book?

 

A: Godquake has layers of spirituality running through it, as characters search for answers to modern day life. But it’s more about learning that the important things in life aren’t things, which is universally true for all cultures. Living is about family, friends, love and finding meaning in life, no matter where you are in the world today. So, the book, well, it’s funny; it’s sad; it’s enlightening--it’s just like life itself.

 

Q: Tell us more about the story?

 

A: Godquake weaves several delightful stories around characters from the village and others who come into the village from the outside world.  For instance:

 

There is Spiros, a young geologist from Athens, who has everything a man could want--a good government job, designer clothes, lots of friends, and football matches to watch--only he’s not very happy with his life.  His job sends him to the village to figure out when it will fall off the cliff, and curious things happen.  Not only does he find the love of a local girl, but through an event--his own personal Godquake--he finds his place in the world through a new found love with the mountain, Mount Olympus.

 

Aphrodite is the most beautiful, most divine woman in the village. But like Helen of Troy, her divine beauty is a fatal flaw that has cursed her into a loveless life.  After all, she’s buried three husbands and a fiancé in her lifetime. The gossip from the local women say that she found a way to kill them all.  But that’s absurd…she only killed one.

 

Q: Why did you write this book?

 

A: After living and working among the villagers of Greece for the past thirty years, I was inspired to write about a way of life, their way of life, that has gone on for thousands of years. These people are funny, clever, and their outlook on life is a celebration that I wanted to share with the rest of world before it goes away forever.  In attempting to express the bond between the Greek villager and his world to the “outside” modern world,  I hope to remind all people of their own roots in a village lifestyle, the traditional home of mankind.  I suppose I ask the question – can a society survive when these roots have been severed?

 

Q: Is there really a village like the one you describe in Godquake?

 

A:  There are hundreds of villages in Greece much like the one I’ve created in the book.  Is there one in particular?  Maybe, but if I were to tell you just where it was, then there’d be no reason to search for your own, and perhaps find your own, special village in the world.

 

 

Anne Ewing Rassios

November 2003