The Emergency Bouzouki Player first edition released 26 May, 2011 at £20. ISBN: 978-0-9568364-03
E Book on Amazon Kindle / Sony/ Nook / i-bookstore. ISBN 978-0-9568364-1-0

The Emergency Bouzouki Player is the true story of a teenager railroaded into the South African army for two years of national service at the height of the Border War. A saga that begins in the small Cretan village of Sfakia, continues through leafy Johannesburg, visits dusty Kimberley and ends on a rainy morning at Heathrow.

The cruelty, the absurdity and the mindlessness of life in the apartheid-era South African army are candidly described in this first-hand account by a young conscript who, to escape the infamous Diskobolos Infantry Training Camp and its murderous instructors, claimed he could play the bouzouki in a subterfuge that was to have unforeseen, sometimes comical and sometimes life-threatening consequences.

Most of all, the Emergency Bouzouki Player is a tribute to the resilience of youth and proof that the human capacity for optimism generates its own unstoppable force. 

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About the book:

In 1979, aged 18, I was conscripted for two years of national service in the South African Army. A Greek teenager seized unwillingly for service in one of Africa's longest and bloodiest conflicts, the 23 year war for Apartheid, contested between the economically advantaged Christian Afrikaner regime and liberation groups including the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) and the armed wing of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe, led by Nelson Mandela.

In my case, the experience was akin to kidnap. I was deeply resentful from the outset and this discontent heightened with the passage of time. After five days of basic training, I replaced resentful compliance with obstinate, anarchic determination to fight the system, resulting in a rich variety of unusual experiences including:

Being court-martialled - Being sent for a week to Bloemfontein's notorious Psychiatric ward 5 - Driving a truck over my foot to become medically reclassified – performing hundreds of shows the length and breadth of South Africa - and telling Prime Minister P.W. Botha that his 'bum stinks’.

I spent most of my service period as a guitarist and emergency bouzouki player in the prestigious Entertainment Corps show band, touring the country and the war zone, which provided an unusual first-hand view of a war about which very little has been reported. My personal experiences, snapshots of people and places from a crucial time in the formation of modern South Africa, are interwoven with a broader historical perspective to provide an entertaining and informative insight into events which have shaped modern South Africa's current national identity.

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