Closing the Summer with Three Books, Three Worlds

The end of summer is always a transition for me. Days get shorter, routines get sharper, and my reading shifts. I move from English-language novels and films into books in my native Greek. Somehow, this change always feels like a refresher — as if switching gears allows me to process faster, consume differently, and reflect more deeply.

This summer, three books made their way into my hands:

1. Fernando Aramburu’s El niño – a short yet devastating novel rooted in the real gas explosion in Ortuella, Spain, in 1980, where more than 50 children lost their lives. A grandfather’s weekly visits to his grandson’s grave form the quiet center of this heartbreaking story. (I’ve already written about this one separately, so I’ll leave it at that here.)
2. Ian Worthington’s Philip II of Macedonia – a history book that takes us back to one of antiquity’s most remarkable rulers, the father of Alexander the Great.
3. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed – a science fiction classic that is far less about space travel than it is about humanity, freedom, and purpose.

At first glance, these three books couldn’t be more different: a true tragedy, a historical biography, and a speculative novel. And yet, when I put them together, they started speaking to one another — about leadership, about humanity, about how we live, and about why we do what we do.