The wonderful stories of Alexandros Papadiamantis invite you to sail to a Greek island without leaving home. And not only that: through the magic of words, descriptions and plots, the reader immediately sails to another time, to the beginning of the twentieth century. He is present in taverns, walks through alleys, listens to rumors, absorbs the beauty of nature, and sees before his eyes a clear picture, a poetic painting that includes much more than three dimensions. Papadiamantis' stories take place on the island of Skiathos. And as on islands, everything in the stories is physical, aromatic, sharp and real. The prose seems to emerge from the bowels of the earth. The actors are the hills, the waves, the sun and the moon, the salt and the beaches, the sounds of goats, containers, ships, wine. And of course, the hopes of several anonymous but clearly unforgettable characters. Between the pages of the book we will meet a character with a weakness for alcohol, delve into the first love of a teenage sailor, meet an American who has returned to the island for mysterious reasons, hope to torpedo a wedding and denounce the gossip of the neighbors. At times, the stories are reminiscent of Giovanni Verga's peasant plots, and perhaps also the social portraits, the human dramas of Emile Zola and Honore. Balzac. Everything in Papadiamantis' stories is very simple, to the point that the truth contained in them is deeply engraved in the memory and the body.