The authors and the publications
Most of Govostis’s titles are political books, Russian and Marxist authors, philosophy. In the basement at 79 Academias Street, a whole host of Greek authors, such as Karagatsis, Hourmouzios, Politis, Glinos, Lapathiotis, Sikelianos, Koukoulis, Embiricos, Ritsos, Elytis, Katsimbalis and Engonopoulos share the shelves in multiple editions and reprints. The periodicals «Neoi Protoporoi» and «Foni tou Vivliou» are also printed here. The publishing house’s first book was «Dream of a Ridiculous Man» by Dostoyevsky, a little booklet 48 pages long with a publishing date of 1926. Many others followed, and Govostis Publishers introduced the Greek public to books such as «Jesus» by Barbusse, «To Synaxari ton Amaratolon» by Karagatsis, many of Yiannis Ritsos’s works, Spinoza, and also «The Deformations of Marxism in Greece» by Theofylaktos Papaconstantinou, subsequently a propagandist of the Greek military dictatorship. Costas Govostis did not keep a copy of each book that he published. «It doesn’t matter,» he would say, «when I retire, I will go to the bookshops and buy them. It’ll be fun.» He died at the age of 54 but his son Yiannis has managed to retrieve some of the early Govostis titles from friends.
