Daphne Kapsali

How far do you need to go to find yourself? What do you have to give up? Daphne didn't go very far. After too many years of living as a writer who didn't write, she gave up her life in London to spend 100 days of solitude on the remote Greek island of Sifnos, off season, and find out, once and for all, who she really was. Her challenge: to write every day. One hundred days and one hundred entries later, her question had been answered in more ways than she could have imagined, and the things she'd given up never mattered in the first place. This book is her story, as personal as it is universal, of the most obvious and most fundamental quest of all: to be happy; to do what you love. Part memoir, part fiction, part philosophy and part travel writing, 100 days of solitude is a collection of one hundred stories, all of them connected and each one self-contained. One hundred essays on choosing uncertainty over security, change over convenience, seeing things for what they truly are, and being surprised by yourself; on love, loss, death and donkeys; on reaching for your dreams, finding enlightenment on a rural road, peeing in public, and locking yourself out of the house; on dangerous herbs, friendly farmers, flying Bentleys and existential cats; and on what it feels like to live in a small, isolated island community through the autumn and winter, to live as a writer who actually writes, and to live as your true, authentic self, no matter who that turns out to be. And to write your own story, the way you want it told; to find your voice, and the courage to let it be heard.

100 Days of Solitude

There are certain things that time cannot touch. Very few. Metal it turns to rust and bones to dust and the souls of those we've loved into ghosts and memories. Ancient temples fall to ruin and gods fall from grace, and people fall out of love and forget. Very few things can withstand the passage of time, its ruthless continuity, always moving on, always leaving moments behind, but in Anna's short lifetime there was one thing that did. Was it hubris to wrench apart what destiny had conspired to unite? Could there be atonement for such a thing? This story begins at the end of a thing that hasn't ended, and travels in orbit in the space between then and not yet, circling questions unanswered and unasked, alternative endings and futures that never came to pass, looking for a place to land. It is the story of Anna and Jack and it's a love story, because all stories are, essentially, about love and the inexplicable things we do in its name and in its absence, in its pursuit and in its wake.

You Can't Name an Unfinished Thing

Don't let the title fool you: this isn't a morbid book. It's a collection of stories about death and dying, yes, but death isn't morbid in itself. Death is a fact, sudden or sad, tragic or inevitable, and it can leave us bereft - but it isn't morbid. Our perception of it often is. But it doesn't have to be. This is a collection of seven stories about death and dying, five of them new to this book and two published before, in another collection. They're a little about how we deal with death, the fact of it, and how we can never be prepared, no matter how much advance notice we have. They're a little about honouring the dead, a little about living in their honour, but mostly they're about being alive. The dead don't need anything from us; it's the living that need our kindness. All we can do for the dead, if we feel that something must be done, is to use the privileges of the living. To laugh, and cry, and ring the bells and turn up when we're needed. To find our better place in this life, and live it in the most uncontained way possible, and be more careful of the memories we make than the memories we'll keep.

Daphne Kapsali

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