Dumagrad Books

Dumagrad Books announces the publication of A Foreign Country, a first novel by Toronto writer Fotios Sarris. The 400 page trade paperback is distributed nationally by LitDistCo.

Alex Doukas, child of Greek immigrants, looks back on the ruin he has made of his life. As a boy he ran with the working-class pack, until by lucky chance discovered the realm of ideas and literature, and escaped Mile End with dreams of entering that world. Now in middle age, he’s living in his father’s apartment, running the old man’s pool hall, chasing off the aged Greek men with their worry beads who unsettle his hip clientele – and wondering how it all went wrong.

A Foreign Country is a family epic that ranges in space and time from the wreckage and desolation of post-war Athens to Mile End Montreal in the seventies and beyond. Bursting with life, earthy and tragic, vivid and bleak, it sits in the tradition of Bellow, Roth - and of course Mordecai Richler, as Alex Doukas and his friends roam the very streets and houses that Duddy, Joshua and the rest of Richler's characters once ruled.

About Fotios Sarris
Fotios Sarris was born in Montreal and grew up in the Mile End district. He did his undergraduate degree at Concordia while working as a stagehand in one of the last of the city’s burlesque theatres. After completing his doctorate at the University of Toronto, he joined the faculty of Ryerson University, where he is a lecturer in the School of Professional Communication.