For this Weekend-Engagement topics: WEEK 175, and πΎππππππ πππππππ πππππππππππ, I choose a topic:
β’ What are you reading or listening to this weekend?
I've always been drawn to reading books that have something to do with Egypt. With Cairo, the Pyramids, the Pharaohs, the Valley of the Kings...
That's why I was delighted when I heard about "Zamalek", the work of a writer who was born in the same city as me, who wrote an interesting story about an antique shop in the capital of Egypt, Cairo, in a part of the city called Zamalek.
The book I read at that time amazed me and I decided to read all the books written by Dejan Tiago Stankovic.
Unfortunately, Dejan, the author of two other books, in addition to the novel Zamalek, died in December last year.
Born in Belgrade in 1965, after his studies, he moved to London, from where he permanently moved to Lisbon.
There he worked as a translator from Portuguese to Serbian, as well as from Serbian to Portuguese, and in the last 10 years, wrote these three books...
One of them, which I am reading right now, is included in the recommended reading in schools in Portugal.
"Estoril", a novel in which he wrote about life shortly before and during the Second World War.
Through the hotels, casinos and restaurants of that time, some of the most influential figures of European life passed through, fleeing from the threat of Nazism.
The novel also talks about a double agent, my namesake Dusko Popov, who was the inspiration for Ian Glemming to create the character of James Bond, the famous 007 agent.
I got to page 179.
I am reading slowly because I know that apart from this book, there is only one other work by Dejan Tiago Stankovic "Where I was from, I am not anymore".
I am sorry that those three works are all that this writer, who left us too soon, managed to write in his lifetime...