Christoforos Sisamos
September 2026, Cyprus. Nine people meet at a shipowner’s house above Kourion, on ground that belongs on paper to a king whose face is on none of their coins, on the eve of the Exaltation of the Cross. A retired Supreme Court judge asks the smallest question she can find: what is a citizen? By midnight, five answers have been tested and broken.
They decide that the citizen cannot be seen without a city to see her in. So they will build the city, in speech, one chapter at a time, each in a different real place on the island, chosen because it argues back. Then they will go out and see who comes.
The record is kept by the court stenographer who was at the table. She writes it the day after, unimproved, and it goes out at once, because that was the condition. Eleven chapters are planned. This is the first.
36 minutes. Free to read.
Tuesday
The primary school in Episkopi, empty on a Sunday
What is education for, and can a citizen be made?
The Dead Zone
Ledra Street, the buffer zone
Who is inside?
Noise
A server room
Can a city think when a machine ranks its thoughts?
The Ward
The surgical ward, at night
What is a person, and what does care owe?
The Mountain of the Cross
Stavrovouni monastery
What does a city need from the sacred, without a state church?
The Line
A National Guard post
What may a just state do, and who does it?
The Port
A ship under management
What is owed: money, property, work.
The Theatre
The theatre at night, with an audience
What is art for?
The Assembly
Somewhere they must choose
The democracy worth being born again.
The Founding
They go out
Whoever reads the plans and shows up.
The book is being written. Each chapter goes out when it is finished rather than years after the last one, which is what the book itself says it is doing, so there is no reason for the page to pretend otherwise.
“If you are reading this, it is because I kept the condition, and because the judge was right about one thing at least: she said the people who read it would be the ones it was for.”
The first chapter is free to read, here, in full. Twelve euro gets you the other ten as they land and the finished book at the end. One payment, no subscription. If it is never finished, you get your money back.
Get the other ten chapters, €12