Mercy Athena

Having arrived from the United States to make a new life in Greece, Andrea Applebee gives a vivid account of the challenges and pleasures that await her as she learns a new language and makes her way around Athens assisted in both cases by her guide dog. Diagnosed at a young age with a degenerative condition affecting her vision, she brings a phenomenologist s sensitivity to immediacy of perception when telling of how she has lived with her condition, survived her unusual upbringing in South Carolina and a relationship with a violent man, and gone on to embrace a future in a foreign land. Her text is complemented by works on paper by Scottish artist Lorna McIntosh, who has drawn inspiration from the present text as well as thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries in her exploration of the notion of life as navigation.