Plato's Cave

By Paris Mentis

Mark Saverra, Greek-American classics professor is the type of guy who figures he's got life buttoned down. A tenured teaching job at a college in Northern California, a cabin in the woods,. A dog to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1401010377
• ISBN13: 9781401010379
• Release Date: May 2001
• Publisher: Xlibris
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A Welcome Glass of Retsina

There's a lot of information in this novel, but it's not just inserted to provide local color - it feels authentic. Apparently the author is not only Greek-American, but has spent some years exploring the Greek islands, and his experiences and reflections on them are an integral part of the book. In the sureness of tone and mastery of subject it reminds one of Lawrence Durrell.It's also a very entertaining page-turner that maintains strong reader interest in the explorations - interior as well as temporal - of the likeable and savvy (but somewhat hapless) scholar-adventurer Mark Saverra. A bare description of the plot might make it sound contrived, but the seams rarely show as the tale dips & soars like a kite in the unpredictable Mediterranean breezes. A nitpicker can find some copyediting changes that the author might have made, but we can always hear the salt water lapping at the rocks & smell the pines heated in the sun in this tale of enchanting women & indelible characters who are involved in Mark's discoveries and in the search for "Agamemnon's Sword" - a priceless relic that has somehow been spirited away from an archeologist's dig - or has it? An immensely interesting read, even when we're seduced by the shadows on the cave wall.

Mentis Rules!

Plato's cave is a labyrinth within a labyrinth. Mentis's protagonist, Mark Saverra, is a quiet and scholarly classics professor at a small college, who falls into a series of intrigues and counterintrigues when he sets out to clear himself from charges that he has stolen a very valuable ancient Mycenaean sword.He shuttles back and forth between his American campus to the archaeological digs in Greece. Saverra (like the author) is of strong Greek heritage and slips easily in and out of one culture, or the other, with ease.A note of interest is that there are a large number of references to Greek legend and mythology that serve as a kind of literary trellis upon which grow the vines of the story. One of the many sensuous females that fall into Saverra's life (and bed) is even named Helen!!Saverra is being shadowed by both good guys and bad guys, and it's hard to tell which is which, at times. Even his closest friend, as well as the erotic lovers he meets along the way, seem to be double and even triple agents as the quest unfolds.So that I not spoil the story, I won't go into further detail here, but will say only that, whether or not the readers of this book are scholars of the Classics, "Plato's Cave" is a fascinating read.