Raise Your Soul

An engrossing portrait of #1 bestseller Yanis Varoufakis's political awakening, told through the extraordinary history of his family and the tumultuous twentieth century in Europe

A captivating portrait of number-one bestselling author Yanis Varoufakis's political awakening, told through the extraordinary lives of five women, and the West's tumultuous history from 1924 to the present.

Eleni put an arm around him and said- 'Come, come, life is ahead of us. Raise your soul now. We have much to do.'

When Yanis Varoufakis was eight years old, his uncle made him a model airplane out of matchsticks and cigarette papers; all he could find in his cell. Yet, to his dismay, his mother Eleni broke open the fragile gift, revealing a hidden message- instructions for fellow dissidents ahead of their forthcoming court martial. It was 1969 and Uncle Panayis was a political prisoner, captured and tortured for resisting the military dictatorship.

Dramatic in scope and deep in feeling, Raise Your Soul is an intimate portrait of three generations caught up in the whirlwind of history. It is also a remarkable narrative spanning one hundred years, beginning in post-colonial Egypt in the 1920s, and then tracing Greece's tumultuous century through Nazi occupation, communist resistance, civil war, Cold War fracture, fascist dictatorship, socialist revival and present-day economic crisis.

At its heart are the women whose resilience, defiance and courage inspired the visionary economist most- Eleni, Anna, Trisevgeni, Georgia and Danae. Through their lives, Varoufakis not only lays bare his own political soul, but confronts the dark forces of authoritarianism that still haunt Europe and beyond, reigniting hope in all of us that we can rise once more.

About the Author

Yanis Varoufakis is the former finance minister of Greece and the author of a memoir, Adults in the Room, and a history, And the Weak Suffer What They Must?, which reveal and explain the catastrophic mishandling of Europe since the financial crisis. Both were number one bestsellers. His latest bestseller is Talking To My Daughter About the Economy: A Brief History of Capitalism. Born in Athens in 1961, Yanis Varoufakis was for many years a professor of economics in Britain, Australia and the USA before he entered government and is currently Professor of Economics at the University of Athens. Since resigning from Greece's finance ministry he has co-founded an international grassroots movement, DiEM25, campaigning for the revival of democracy in Europe and speaks to audiences of thousands worldwide.