A Greek Australian writer has joined the list of acclaimed artists, including a New York Times photographer, contributing to The Pigeonhole’s Letters from Greece series launching on 9 November 2015.

“It was an honour to be asked to write about Greece, the country of my birth, and Florina, the town in which I was born,” says Peter Papathanasiou.

Letters from Greece is the third ‘Letters from …’ essay series from The Pigeonhole, a digital publisher based in London and Berlin. It follows on from the overwhelming success of Letters from Africa and Letters from Berlin. Each of the ten essays focuses on different themes – from Athenian artists’ responses to the economic crisis to the quirks and paradoxes of rural life in northern Greece, which was Papathanasiou’s focus.

“Situated deep in the mountains of northern Greece, Florina is a relatively unknown part of the country,” Papathanasiou said. “Unlike the idyllic islands or the busy capital, it sees very little tourist trade, but is a hidden gem.”

In winter, the temperature in Florina plummets to minus twenty, and snowfalls are heavy. “Like Australia, snow is not something most people associate with Greece,” he said. According to the most recent Australian census, Melbourne has the largest Greek population of any city in the world outside of Greece, and ranks third behind Athens and Thessaloniki for its ethnic Greek population. Papathanasiou, who was christened Panagiotis, identifies himself as equally Greek and Australian.

“Look at my face and I’m Greek,” he said. “Hear me speak and I’m Australian.”

Athens-based literary agent Evangelia Avloniti curated and introduces Letters from Greece. She studied art, archaeology, and literary translation at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University College London, and the European Translation Centre, and began her career at Sotheby’s in London.

“During one of Greece’s moments of greatest limbo – at the very height of the post-referendum madness in July 2015 – I approached The Pigeonhole with the idea of a Letters from Greece series,” said Avloniti. “Greece was everywhere in the news, but, rather predictably, nearly no media story accurately reflected what it really meant to be living in Greece at that time.”

Featuring an eclectic line-up of writers and photographers, Avloniti said Letters from Greece “goes far beyond what’s served up in the press to offer an intimate, compelling insight into what it’s really like to be living and working in Greece today”.

The New York Times photographer Eirini Vourloumis introduces a photo series of interiors of Greek ministries, which accompanies Rachel Howard’s essay. Angela Dimitrakaki writes on apartment culture in Athens. Miriam Frank considers life on the quiet island of Serifos in the western Cyclades. Stella Kasdagli explores the facets of being a woman and a working mother in modern Greece.

“From immigration to surfing, corruption to dating, the essays showcase the real Greece,” said Avloniti. “We reveal the creativity and energy surviving the depths of the Greek crisis.”

Having been impressed by the unpublished manuscript of one of Papathanasiou’s novels in 2014, Avloniti approached him to write about Florina for Letters from Greece.

In 2015, he signed with London-based literary agency Rogers, Coleridge & White, and now divides his time between Australia, England and Greece.

Papathanasiou was born in Greece in June 1974 but was adopted as a baby by a family in Australia. The timing of his birth came only a month before the Turkish invasion of Cyprus was launched on 20 July. This came after the 1974 Cypriot coup d’état which sought to annex the island to Greece.

“I was due to leave for Australia around the time of the coup, but Greece went into lockdown and closed all its borders,” said Papathanasiou. “In the end, I didn’t leave until October.”

Greece and Turkey’s shared history is at the heart of Papathanasiou’s essay in Letters from Greece. Greek-Turkish relations have been marked by alternating periods of mutual hostility and reconciliation ever since Greece won its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1821. Papathanasiou wrote about Florina both today and in the context of the mass migration of refugees during the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey.

“My grandfather was one of those refugees forcibly expelled from Anatolia, which is the westernmost protrusion of Asia,” Papathanasiou said. “At the time, these people were settled in the newly-won lands of the north, in Greek Macedonia, which needed populating.”

His grandfather Vasilios built a stone house for his young family with five children, which still stands today.

“I never got to meet my biological parents and have only recently reconnected with my two brothers, who still live in the house our grandfather built,” Papathanasiou continues. “Today, the house is dwarfed on all sides by multi-storey apartment buildings built in the 1970s.”

His eldest brother Vasilios is named after their grandfather, in line with Greek tradition. His middle brother is Georgios. The family considered developing their property many times but in the end couldn’t because of the history attached to their grandfather’s home.

“Up until only a few years ago, my brothers had to chop and burn wood in a combustion stove to prepare dinner and heat water for a shower. Thankfully, that’s one thing they’ve now modernised.”

With thousands of new migrants from countries like Syria and Afghanistan now arriving in Greece each day, the timing of Papathanasiou’s piece is poignant in the context of history.

“The vast majority of these new refugees are now crossing into the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, whose border is a mere ten miles from Florina,” Papathanasiou explains. “The Albanian border is close too, another thirty miles further west.”

He acknowledges that borders have shaped a significant part of both his personal and family history.

“This is Greece,” said Papathanasiou. “At the crossroads of three continents – Europe, Africa, and Asia. With such unique geography, it’s no wonder the country’s history is so rich.”

Avloniti is more philosophical in her outlook for Greece. “In a country ground down by financial and ideological collapse, it is perhaps inevitable that we Greeks are living through a paradox: mourning for the old while simultaneously searching for and celebrating the new,” she said.

“Ours is a case of existential limbo; like a castaway washed up on a new shore, a Greek today is in equal parts numb, scared, hopeful and – dare I say – excited.”

Letters from Greece launches online on 9 November 2015, with subsequent instalments following every four days.

All readers living in Greece can subscribe to the series for free until 17 November 2015.

For more information, head to www.thepigeonhole.com/books/letters-from-greece