Nike: A Romance [Hardcover]

Nicholas Flokos (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1998

On the island of Samothrace, whose shore once was graced by the greatest of classical sculptures, the natives are born dispossessed. "We mourn our Nike," they lament. "Buried for centuries by an earthquake, she was unburied in fragments by a pillaging Frenchman and shanghaied to Paris aboard a French freighter." Imprisoned in the Louvre since 1863, this beautiful statue seems nothing less than the ancient island's kidnapped soul. "We have with France, you see, an unsettled score. Repatriation. Bring back our winged one, bring her home." No one feels Samothrace's loss as deeply as Photi Anthropotis. Official keeper of the Nike's findspot, the damaged, hapless Photi dreams of glory, of rescuing his goddess in distress. He is abetted in his fantasy by two beautiful women, an innocent, love-starved French museum guard and a glamorous, narcissistic American documentary filmmaker. Together they hatch the art theft of the century - together, but each to his or her own ends. Unpredictable in its turn of plot, sparkling in its verbal fireworks, NIKE is a charming tour de force -- and the auspicious debut of a delightful new storyteller.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

...[a] witty first novel...

From Publishers Weekly

The focus of this charming first novel is the repatriation of the victorious, winged (though headless and armless) statue of Nike of Samothrace, spirited off in the 19th century to the Louvre. In a first-person plural voice that will remind readers of another meticulously composed debut by a Greek American, Jeffrey Eugenides's Virgin Suicides, Flokos assumes the ancient national grief of the Samothracians, rural villagers of a tiny, mountainous island in the Aegean who are deprived of their goddess-mother and mocked by French tourists. A century after the theft, Photi Anthropotis, "light of humanity," a failed poet and three-time loser in love who has a "thin face so wrung by defeat that from the back he looks to us more like himself," rallies his dispirited compatriots to subsidize the statue's retrieval from Paris. Instead, he becomes embroiled with a lovelorn female Louvre guard who spouts Baudelaire. Meanwhile, a PBS camera crew, headed by the queenly emasculating American producer Susanna Regas (aka Mother), lands on the island to re-create the perfidious "discovery" of the statue by the Frenchman Champoiseau. Using the smitten Photi as stooge, she hatches a plot to finagle the real statue back to the island so that she can film the jubilation of the natives. The one hitch in this splendid fantasy of Epanapatrismos is, of course, the time-honored Greek chastisement of fate, familiar especially to the flawed, self-tortured Photi. Flokos has polished this story beautifully in terms of tone, pacing, characterization and prose, and each small facet radiates. It is a spectacular debut.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 179 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin; 1St Edition edition (July 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395883962
• ISBN-13: 978-0395883969
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,983,806 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Story! Must Become A Movie!!, September 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Nike: A Romance (Hardcover)

I first heard of NIKE on ABC's Good Morning America! It had such great reviews I had to get it. The story is very well written and would make an extremely entertaining film. Flokos has created a wonderful and exciting story around the real NIKE statue in the Louvre. Movie-goers are impatiently waiting for more original stories and will be lined up for this one!!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Flokos: Another classical Greek writer!, October 13, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Nike: A Romance (Hardcover)

Wow! What outstanding writing in this novel! Mr. Flokos deserves plaudits galore. This is a different and memorable story told in a beautiful style. The novel has a universal theme and nothing is extraneous, all details contribute to a final tragic conclusion. Nike deserves to win the National Book Award!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful writing and great characters in a brilliant debut, September 27, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Nike: A Romance (Hardcover)

This is the book that the phrases "auspicious debut" and "a little gem" were invented for. Flokos is incredibly talented - from the opening sentences you know you're in the hands of a master stylist. It's like reading the first novel of a new Nabokov.

The book is the story of a somewhat pathetic, obsessed character, Photi, who wants to "repatriate" (i.e. steal) the statue of the Nike from the Louvre and bring it back to Greece. He is pushed forward in his quest by an imperious documentary filmmaker who wants to film the theft. The results are both hilarious and tragic, and Flokos writes with the soul of a poet. Bravo! Highly recommended.