Brandy Sour is a novella length book by the Cypriot author Constantia Soteriou, translated from Greek by Lina Protopapa. It won the 2023 National Book Prize in Cyprus and the author won the 2019 Commonwealth Short Story prize.
Foundry Editions, A Love of Mediterranean Literature
It was the first book published in the Foundry Editions collection of Mediterranean fiction back in 2024. This independent press was created out of a desire to discover and share new voices from the Mediterranean and the people and lands around it.
I heard about them after reading an excellent article in the Guardian entitled ‘Huge scars’: novelist finds a fractured Spain in its half-built houses about the book Far by Rosa Ribas (my review) translated by Charlotte Coombe. I sent a copy of it to a good friend in New Zealand and read it myself and loved it. I started seeing reviews for other Foundry Editions works and now I’m following their list closely.
A Turbulent History Told Through Hotel Beverages
Brandy Sour is set in the emblematic Ledra Palace Hotel, established in 1949 on Nicosia’s UN-controlled buffer zone, the Green Line that, since 1964, has divided the island into Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot sectors.
It has been witness to some of the country’s significant historical events and can be considered an integral part of Cyprus’ cultural heritage and difficult past.
“The Palace was the epicentre of the island’s recent history. It was built as the promise of a new era; a haven for all nationalities, all communities. It drew people from all backgrounds: the wealthy bourgeoisie who lounged by its cerulean pool; the poorer working classes who made its beds – and its Brandy Sours…
But in 1974, it became the site of the worst battle of the war; a symbol of all that could not be allowed to fall. After the division, it was the endpoint of student demonstrations, the gathering place for those who mourned their missing.
And when the barriers finally opened, the Palace once more became a symbol of hope. Of promises that were given, but never kept. Of wounds that ran very, very deep.” Constantia Soteriou, Cyprus Mail
The book is made up of twenty two vignettes or short character studies that form an interlinked slice of life of the hotel and the many characters who have had connections to it.
From Brandy Sour to Rosebud Tea to Grape Molasses
Each character is represented by a beverage starting with the Brandy Sour : The King. Much is revealed in the opening line.
They say a barman invented the cocktail for King Farouk of Egypt in the 40’s – a dark time for the king, who is already grown and in trouble, no longer the handsome, athletic boy charming Europe with his Western manners but a heavy middle aged man facing all kinds of political headaches in Egypt – and elsewhere too – who has to conceal his fondness for alcohol.
The King asks for something that doesn’t look like a drink, with that good brandy and the lemons he likes, and the barman obliges creating a cocktail worthy of a king that wishes to deceive people, with lemonade to sweeten him and the lemons to remind him of his sorrows in a tall glass that resembles an iced tea.
We learn of the tastes of local ladies and English ladies, of the maid, the cleaner, a guerilla fighter and with every consumer of a beverage, an important anecdote relating to their predilection.
City people think that roses are only good for looking at. Village people know that flowers are also good for eating. Especially roses – those tiny pink roses, the hundred-petal roses called damask roses, the ones that climb and spread their thorns across fences and hedges.
The Doorman likes his infusion of rosebud tea in his tin mag and when he starts work at the Big Hotel he takes his tin mug and the root of a damask rose and secretly plants it in the hedge. They must be picked in August with the morning dew, or risk a bitter infusion; it helps digest the indigestible.
He always wakes at dawn and he goes to the kitchen to have his coffee prepared the way he likes it. The only coffee of the day. With lots of kaymak and no sugar. Turkish coffee – Greek coffee, he always corrects himself – with sugar is an absolute waste of coffee. It needs to be bitter. There’s no point otherwise.
After the morning ritual of the maître’d, we learn of his role as the first shots are fired and he brings the foreigners down to the basement for protection. He returns home and anxiously watches the fighting on his TV, he meets his former colleagues in a coffee shop, the maid, the cleaning lady and the doorman.
He’s taken to drinking coffee in the afternoon now, too – no sugar the way it befits funerals and grief and tragedy and death. That kind of coffee. He takes his coffee with thick kaymak and no sugar. Coffee needs to be bitter – there’s no point otherwise.
The Builder and the Grape Molasses
One of the more moving stories near the end is that of the sensitive builder who gets mouth sores when he is stressed. He can’t eat or drink, there is no medicine that can help him.
The only thing that seems to make a difference is the grape molasses an old lady whose house he fixes gives him. Grape juice molasses that you boil for hours and hours, that you boil and boil until the liquid turns thick like honey – you dab it on your lips and on your gums and it’s the only thing that can cure mouth ulcers, those little holes in your mouth.
We learn the reason for his sensitivity, for only a few have the skills he does, who know old architecture like he does, how to repair the ancient materials in the foundations, to feel and understand old houses.
Ritual, Repetition and Reassurance
In each story there is often repetition, of that which is important to the character, like the ritual of the beverage, something that is repeated, that is part of a way of life. In the same way language repeats and reassures, building connection between the ritual and the meaning and importance it brings to the community, something to be cherished. The reader too is reminded of that meaning for that character and is moved by it.
I read the book without referring to the history, but on finishing it, I wanted to know more and went looking for the wider context, as we sense the changes occurring through each character and their habits, how the hotel itself somehow embodies the collective memory of a history. Over time, it is occupied by different kinds of guests, welcome and unwelcome, civilian and military and the local people who try to accommodate them and stay safe and adjust to the new paradigm of a post-colonial, independent country and then the destabilising effect of the coup in 1974 that created a separation and dividing line between Turkish and Greek Cypriots.
It’s a beautiful, evocative tribute to a culture, a heritage and the people that have populated and passed through it, that gives pause for thought, of the essence of ritual, of the importance of even the most simple traditions and need for humans to satiate a thirst, a soulful desire.
Seventeen years ago, the author Rosa Ribas was taken by friends to visit a strange monument to a broken era in Seseña; it was a housing development known as ‘The Manhattan of La Mancha’.
Built in 2008, it was designed to house 40,000 people in 13,500 affordable apartments – a ready made settlement emerging from the dust-bowls of remote farmland 40 kilometres from Madrid. It now looked something like between an eerie ghost town and an abandoned building site.
One representation of many, it was a stark reminder of a housing bubble, burst by a rampant, unchecked building boom bust, and a global financial crisis that created an unprecedented unemployment rate and the deepest economic recession Spain had experienced for fifty years.
“When you walked around, you’d see the blocks where people were living, the blocks that were semi-inhabited, and then all the skeletons of buildings in different stages of completion,” she said. “From one day to the next, they told the workers not to come back the following day. And it all stayed like that.”
As night fell and three lights came, the realisation that they were the only people living there spawned the idea for a novel, Lejos in Spanish, now translated by Charlotte Coombe into English, brought to us by an excellent new imprint Foundry Editions, created in 2023 out of a love of these three things:
a love for discovering and sharing new voices, a love for the Mediterranean and the people and lands that surround it, and a love of internationalism and reading across borders.
The patterns on the covers of their books have been designed to capture the visual heritage of the Mediterranean. This one is inspired by the architecture of Santiago Calatrava’s City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia. It was created by Hélène Marchal.
Far, A Novel
I loved this novel, it is evocative of this semi-abandoned place, it depicts a demarcation between the legals and the illegals, the rightful inhabitants and the opportunistic outsiders, the followers of rules, those that want to make their own, and those that fall into the cracks.
The entire development was constructed on a pile of poorly concealed sleaze, a chain of bribery, corruption, intimidation, and complicit silences. No ancient manuscripts, no mythical foundations. If these lands had been the scene of some momentous event, back when battles of conquest and reconquest were being fought all over the area, no one had bothered to record it. It was a bleak place, devoid of stories, where it was impossible to satisfy any yearnings for greatness.
The entrance to the development still shows billboards offering apartments for sale, the middle one depicting the fugitive developer Fernando Pacheco in his suit and tie, the others depicting scenes of golfing, swimming pools and cocktails, a far cry from the reality within which they sat.
The opening lines of Far stayed with me for the entire novel, they foreshadow the dénouement, a future turning point, that could even be the beginning of a follow up novel. For me it was a delightfully transgressive ending that I wasn’t even looking for, it arrived abruptly, though more regular readers of noir fiction might have seen it coming.
That night, he had no idea he was walking over a cemetery. A secret cemetery with no gravestones or crosses, and only two dead bodies. There would be three by the time he left.
The lyrical prose is clever, compelling and nothing is lost in translation.
The Lost and Fallen
We meet two unnamed characters, the first is the man we meet walking across that unconsecrated ground. He has just walked out of his office, his job, his life and is looking for a temporary refuge, when he remembers this place, this lost dream of many that one of his colleagues bought into. He needs to stay in hiding and at first is vigilant in keeping away from others, but the forced isolation and the desolate nature of the place loosen his discipline and he makes a friend in an older widower, Matias.
The second character is a woman living in one of the villas alone. Experiencing a double abandonment, she is sticking it out, she works from home and writes the minutes of the resident’s association meetings. Since the realisation that the development had truly been abandoned, the association had turned its focus onto other items.
Hegemons Harmony Hampered
Then, given the inhospitable environment, efforts became focused on the interior, on the decor of the apartments and villas. And on the “dignification” of the settlement. Swept pavements, manicured gardens. Being dressed properly in the street. “So, no more going out in your dressing gown to buy bread,” said Sergio Morales, the chairman of the residents’ association, at one of their meetings, in that jocular tone which often masks inconvenient or ridiculous orders.
In this place that promised a kind of utopia, those that bought into it begin to realise that they have become neighbours with the marginalised, as the unfinished houses become occupied by people in equally difficult, but entirely different circumstances and they don’t like it. They begin to obsess over it, becoming paranoid, arguing about whether to call the police or take care of things themselves.
The destruction of their fantasy, the deterioration of an imagined life, of people’s mental states and even their physical states, emulates the disintegration of the country’s economic situation, that contributed to the depth of suffering inflicted on the population, as millions of jobs were lost and opportunities for youth disappeared, creating a surge in racism and xenophobia.
Light Always Illuminates
And there, amid the chaos, insecurity and fear, unlikely friendships and connections develop, between the man and the widower on the unfinished side of the settlement, the woman from the deteriorating utopia on the other side and the Dominican who doesn’t ask questions, working at the petrol station.
Brilliantly told, infused with sardonic humour, it is a disturbing yet revelatory tale of what happens when severe change arrives unbidden and the effect it has on the ‘haves,’ the ‘have-nots’ and those that fall through the cracks in between.
Rosa Ribas was born in El Prat de Llobregat in 1963. She has a degree in Hispanic Philology from the University of Barcelona, and spent time in Frankfurt at the Goethe University and the Instituto Cervantes. She now lives and works in Barcelona again and the city plays a big role in her writing.
Rosa is widely considered one of the queens of Spanish noir, achieving critical and commercial success in Spain with her Dark Years Trilogy (Siruela) and her Hernández trilogy (Tusquets). Far is her first foray away from crime fiction, into a more menacing social commentary. It is her first book to be translated into English.
Translator, Charlotte Coombe
Charlotte Coombe translates works from French and Spanish into English. She was shortlisted for the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute Translation Prize 2023 for her co-translation of December Breeze by Marvel Moreno. In 2022 she won the Oran Robert Perry Burke Award for her translation of Antonio Diaz Oliva’s short story ‘Mrs Gonçalvesand theLives of Others’, and she was shortlisted for the Valle Inclán Translation Prize 2019 for her translation of Fish Soup by Margarita García Robayo.
Word by Word 