Books published by Armida Publications Ltd

While many of the heroes of Greek literature of the pre and post-war era are caught up in the guiding national narrative and its myths, Dimitri is a person with more than one home. His story is a story of the Greek diaspora, one of curiosity, awakening, humorous observation, and the broadening of horizons. The second volume in Miltiades Hatzopoulos' trilogy has Dimitri arriving in Paris in 1956, a stranger in a foreign land, bewildered and bemused, but soon swept up in the reality of a country he has so far learned about only through his reading of French medieval literature. A sophisticated French family welcome him into their confusingly shabby upper-class home, where he lodges together with a colourful cast of characters on the sixth floor.Now permanently exiled from Cyprus, Dimitri is committed to his adoptive country. Grateful for the opportunities that the French Republic has so generously bestowed upon him, he becomes a French citizen and volunteers for military service just as the political unrest of the 60s hits the streets of Paris. In counterpoint to his own inner turmoil, the French colonial war in Algeria, the Arab-Israeli War and the military coup in Greece all take place while he is in France, and meanwhile the tragedy of Cyprus continues to unfold. Dimitri's humorous observation of life in the army is one of the many glories of this book, along with the fine descriptions of character, Paris and the provinces, the niceties of French society, the complexity of personal relations, and a vivid introduction to the politics of the time from a first-hand perspective. Historically enlightening and vivid, the book takes us along Dimitri's own personal journey, which is defined and dictated by the events going on around him, as he grapples with a world that sweeps him along, amused, confused and enchanted.

On the eve of a new crusade, Cyprus, the last Christian stronghold in the Levant, is torn apart when the Templars connive against King Henry in favor of his brother Amaury.The enigmatic Lois, with the assistance of the Seneschal's scribe, Nicholas, undertakes to spy on Amaurywhile a serfs' rebellion is underway.The arrest of the Templars in Europe changes the status quo, and the Templars on the island bury some of their possessions, drawing maps with their exact location.Seven hundred years later, one such map resurfaces in Covent Garden and a treasure hunt begins.Cyprus 2013. The banks raid their clients' deposits in the 'bail-in'. Michael Costa goes to bed a millionaire and wakes up struggling to make ends meet. Unexpected help comes when Lucy Hernandez buys his house. Unbeknownst to them, the location of the house is the X-location on the Templar map.---By Lina Ellina, author of "The English Scholar's Ring" LISTED for the EUROPEAN BOOK PRIZE 2016 and "The Venetian" LISTED FOR THE EUROPEAN BOOK PRIZE 2012.

The Seamstress of Ourfa richly recreates the culture of the Armenian community in Ourfa at the tail end of the Ottoman Empire.The eponymous seamstress, Khatoun, creates beautiful dresses that leave her customers' husbands dizzy with desire, while her sister in law Ferida cooks sumptuous feasts to sustain a growing and lovingly described group of relatives and the waifs and strays they adopt.The author creates a finely textured sense of family, only slowly making the reader aware that the date is creeping nearer to 1915 and the genocide of the Armenian people in Turkey. When the horrendous events of those years start to unfold, the traditions and lives of the Armenian people are slowly yet inexorably torn apart. The Seamstress of Ourfa does not shy away from the painful realities of those years, but manages to maintain a sense of cultural continuity into the 1960's, where the author's surviving family reunite in Nicosia, Cyprus.

Paul lives a basic life focusing on just getting by from moment to moment, day to day. The man who pays for his up-keep makes sure he has the basics, but only the basics, on which to live. Paul is unsure why this patron keeps him at all. In truth, he doesn't understand much, nor does he want to. Ignorance is his way of life; being unaware his default mode. He might even be happy if he were just left alone.Paul's backer is having an affair, but what does his wife know about it? Paul is given a mission to find out and is forced to become an unwilling private detective. Not knowing what he is doing, nor why, he is plunged into a world filled with eccentrics: the extraordinarily ordinary private detective, Mr Samuels; Cassandra, the patron's wife, who seems caught in a 1930s novel; the mistress whose odd-coloured eyes are perhaps the least disturbing thing about her. But the real mystery might be Paul himself: who is he really? Why is he a kept man? Why can't he cope with any of the people and things forced upon him? Told with great energy and urgency, Of People and Things is at once a comic mystery story, similar to the works of Will Self or a comic Cormac McCarthy, but also a strangely unsettling and moving novel as uncanny moments pile upon each other to test the hapless narrator's attempts to understand just what is going on.