Background
Petrakis, Harry Mark was born on June 5, 1923 in St. Louis. Son of Mark E. and Stella (Christoulakis) Petrakis.
( Legends of Glory and Other Stories contains a novella a...)
Legends of Glory and Other Stories contains a novella and eight short stories by award-winning author Harry Mark Petrakis. In a departure from his previous, highly regarded work, Petrakis offers a fresh new perspective in the novella, “Legends of Glory.” For the first time Petrakis deals with the traditions and emotions of a small Midwestern town caught in the whirlwind of the Iraq War. In a communal rite of mourning, each character embodies a different voice, a different perspective, in regard to patriotism and pacifism. Although the novella relates to the sacrifice of a young man, the grieving of parents, and the conflicts of a family, it explores human sorrow and anger unchanged from the time of the Trojan War. In a return to his earlier lyrical prose style, Petrakis also treats us to eight beautifully crafted short stories. “Beauty’s Daughter” introduces a sullen-spirited Greek bakery owner and his lovely, more amiable wife. “The Birthday” considers the fear that most people have of the emotional and physical decline that the years bring and the reconciliation with death. In “The Wisdom of Solon,” Solon, who does not realize that life cannot be neatly categorized within the mysterious relationships between men and women, finds that every action sets in motion a series of often bewildering consequences. The question of a proper marriage match and the struggle to make the right choice mark “The Rousing of Mathon Sarlas.” And the longing to believe that something survives our mortal bodies even if reason dictates otherwise is central to “A Dishwasher’s Tale.” Completing the collection are “Christina’s Summer,” “Rites of Passage,” and “A Tale of Color,” which are also presented in an inviting prose style and individualized by engaging characters to provide readers with a cumulative sense of culture, geography, and sensibility.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0809327589/?tag=2022091-20
(In 1919 Nick Dandolos arrived in Chicago from Greece, pur...)
In 1919 Nick Dandolos arrived in Chicago from Greece, pursuing the American dream. Instead, tempted into a high-stakes game of cards, he is driven to humiliation and defeat. From these depths he begins his painstaking mastery of the skills of gambling under the tutelage of the crafty old gambler, Nestor, who says, "If God wished to learn to gamble, he would come to me."Wreaking vengeance on the powerful gangsters who had beaten him, Nick begins a meteoric ascent that carries him through no-limit games with kings and tycoons, and, finally, gains for himself legendary status as "Nick the Greek."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385049099/?tag=2022091-20
( Thirty-one years after masterful storyteller and prolif...)
Thirty-one years after masterful storyteller and prolific author Harry Mark Petrakis wrote the historical novel The Hour of the Bell—set in the first year of Greece's war of independence from the Turkish Empire—he now carries the narrative forward in his newest work, The Shepherds of Shadows. With this powerful sequel, Petrakis captures the fury and ferocity of revolution in the country that formed the bedrock of western culture. Featuring many of the characters who appeared in the earlier book, The Shepherds of Shadows depicts the horrors of war in battle scenes that echo the visceral starkness of conflict found in Homer's Iliad. The novel also includes a vivid portrayal of Lord Byron, who, through his poetry, supported the cause of Greece's fight for independence inspiring the world to provide aid and volunteers for the struggle. Byron himself traveled to Greece to join the war for liberation. Woven through the tapestry of war are stories of the love of a young guerilla fighter for a Greek girl and her child, born of a brutal rape, as well as the love of the scribe, Xanthos, for a village woman widowed by the war. There are lyrical descriptions of a village wedding and of the rituals of a village funeral. And always there is the mystical, overpowering presence of the Greek landscape and its majestic past blending reality and myth, as Petrakis creates a modern epic based on one of the most savage yet least known conflicts in European history.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0809328631/?tag=2022091-20
("Every man's life is an Odyssey: it does not matter if th...)
"Every man's life is an Odyssey: it does not matter if the body remains rooted in one place. For it is the heart and spirit that journey to Ithaca."Those words from Father Marlas, parish priest to Kostas Volakis, embody the theme of this novel, which carries Kostas and his bride, Katerina from the harsh life on Crete, to the United States, through their struggles with poverty, and through their joys and sorrows with children and grandchildren.For one of their children, Kostas feels not love, but hate, which leads inexorably to murder, and, finally, to a dramatic redemption in prison.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0595007600/?tag=2022091-20
( In his tenth novel, The Orchards of Ithaca, celebrated ...)
In his tenth novel, The Orchards of Ithaca, celebrated Chicago storyteller Harry Mark Petrakis enhances his vigorous naturalism with humor, charm, and revelation. From the street level vantage point of Orestes Panos, a prosperous restaurateur on the eve of his fiftieth year and the coming millennium, Petrakis personalizes humankind’s epic struggle between the unresolved guilt and sins of our shared past and the potential of a still untainted future. Friend and host to the pantheon of Chicago political and sports celebrities, from Ditka to Daley, Jordan to Kup, Orestes is a respected member of his Halsted Street neighborhood. Unbeknownst to his peers, he privately wars with the consequences of a near-fatal childhood illness and the insecurities foisted upon him by his late, brutal father. Orestes finds security and comfort in his twenty-three-year marriage to the loving Dessie, without knowing that she harbors stark secrets of her own. Oblivious to these unvoiced burdens of their parents are the Panos children: a son forced into a hasty wedlock when he impregnated a mafioso’s daughter, and a teenaged daughter who seeks salvation in designer fashions. Orestes must also endure the barbs of his shrewish mother-in-law, an avid Tom Selleck admirer who openly scorns her son-in-law for lacking the machismo of her screen idol. As Y2K, Oval Office infidelity, the casualties of Columbine, and millennium fever loom over them, the Greek Town community is not without its own disruptions. When his parish priest is accused of child molestation, Orestes becomes the young cleric’s orator and advocate in the court of public opinion. He also must contend with a young, golden-haired temptress who seeks to draw him into her fantasy of a dead poet and his muse. But these crises of faith and fealty pale in the face of the contest of character arising when family tragedy sparks confession in the Panos household, forcing Orestes and Dessie to reveal long-concealed truths that threaten their sacred union. With their reality torn asunder, Orestes and Dessie confront the same choices posed to a conflicted globe: to enter this fresh millennium still imprisoned by the terrors and obsessions of individual pasts or to find the wisdom and compassion to move forward as liberated and deeply loving human beings.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0809325780/?tag=2022091-20
( The newest novel from acclaimed storyteller Harry Mark ...)
The newest novel from acclaimed storyteller Harry Mark Petrakis, Twilight of the Ice is a dramatic tale of revelation and redemption set against the backdrop of the 1950s Chicago rail yards. In a classic yarn expertly balancing the realistic with the mythic, Petrakis chronicles the life of Mike Zervakis, a Greek immigrant and the last in the line of the strong, skilled railroad car icemen, in a profession becoming obsolete with the advent of modern refrigeration. After fleeing from the despotic Turkish occupation of his homeland of Crete, and then escaping from boyhood servitude in his uncle’s shabby Chicago lunchroom, Mike at last finds his calling in the craft of the ice at the Team Track, the desolate ice depot in the heart of industrial Chicago. Here, under the oppressive rule of brutal foreman Earl, and bolstered by the camaraderie of alcoholic former schoolteacher Rafer Martin, Mike carves out his fate. Mike’s icing world is populated by a rough crew of old-timers and rookies, including the stoic Polish icemen Budny and Orchowski, the buoyant and reckless Noodles, the brooding war veteran Stamps, and Mike’s young helper and surrogate son, Mendoza. This harsh world is also home to Mike’s beloved, the prostitute Reba; Rafer’s temptation incarnate, the fragile Leota; and the old iceman-turned-preacher, Israel, a man plagued with apocalyptic visions of a second ice age in which mankind’s salvation would depend upon the chosen icemen. Beset by age and a failing body, Mike yearns to find his heir, someone to whom he can pass his skill and his devotion to the craft. After finding only cold indifference among the young summer workers, he finally is introduced to the powerful young giant, S.K., a born iceman. But when S.K. carelessly causes the death of an icing veteran, old hatreds surface and Mike’s dream of a successor seems doomed. All that remains for the master iceman is a final savage struggle against his exacting taskmaster, Earl, and an even more relentless foe, the twilight of his own life.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0809325063/?tag=2022091-20
(From the raids of mountain guerillas and local village up...)
From the raids of mountain guerillas and local village uprisings, to the first great sea battles of small island fleets, to the siege of Tripolitza, Petrakis has recreated the Greek War of Independence from Turkey. This epic story interweaves tales of stunning cruelty and heroism, of compassion, love, sacrifice, ambition and betrayal-on both sides of the conflict.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385048777/?tag=2022091-20
(A celebration of family life and an elegy to growing up i...)
A celebration of family life and an elegy to growing up in a close-knit first generation American family - in 1916, when Europe was consumed by war, his father, a Greek Orthodox priest, was offered a parish in Price, Utah and so they left Crete -not realizing that they would never return. His family eventually wound up in Chicago where the author was born and grew up during the Depression. This memoir ends with the sale of his first story. Dust jacket art by Janet Halverson.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0006CPK0C/?tag=2022091-20
Petrakis, Harry Mark was born on June 5, 1923 in St. Louis. Son of Mark E. and Stella (Christoulakis) Petrakis.
Student, University Illinois, Champaign, 1940—1941. Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), University Illinois, Champaign, 1971. Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Governor's State University, Chicago, 1980.
Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Hellenic College, Brookline, Massachusetts, 1984. Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Roosevelt University, Chicago, 1987. Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), American College Greece, Athens, 2004.
Doctor of Humane Letters (honorary), Indiana University, Bloomington, 2006.
Freelance writer, teacher, lecturer. Teacher workshop classes in novel, short story. McGuffey visiting lecturer, Ohio U., Athens, 1971; writer-in-residence, Chicago Public Library, 1976-1977; writer-in-residence, Chicago Board Education, 1978-1979; Kazantzakis Professor, San Francisco State University, 1992.
(At the heart of A Dream of Kings is Leonidas Matsoukas, o...)
( Thirty-one years after masterful storyteller and prolif...)
(A celebration of family life and an elegy to growing up i...)
(From the raids of mountain guerillas and local village up...)
( The newest novel from acclaimed storyteller Harry Mark ...)
( In his tenth novel, The Orchards of Ithaca, celebrated ...)
(From the ageless elements of great drama-love and hate, f...)
( Legends of Glory and Other Stories contains a novella a...)
("Every man's life is an Odyssey: it does not matter if th...)
(In 1919 Nick Dandolos arrived in Chicago from Greece, pur...)
(A contemporary parable, rich in Greek imagery both Christ...)
(New York: David McKay Company, 1969. Hardbound, 8.5 inche...)
(Dust jacket art by Hy Roth. His third book and first coll...)
Member Authors Guild, Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association, Writers Guild American-West.
Married Diane Perparos, September 30, 1945. Children: Mark, John, Dean.