The book includes selected papers (writing compositions, reviews and several sketches) from the student years of Dinos Christianopoulos (literary nickname of Konstantinos Dimitriadis). It is the content of eleven numbered small notebooks (12,5×17 cm), printed by him. These notebooks were found in an envelope when the author donated his archive to the Central Library of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2016. Since Christianopoulos was born in March 1931, these works were done between the ages of twelve and seventeen.

The edition is in an identical format to preserve authenticity, and is intended to illuminate the evolutionary stages of the author’s formation. Two main categories emerge through the material presented. The reader can discern the stylistic and structural features of his personal writing, as well as the thematic components that later developed in his literary work (punctuation, critical mood, early maturity, lyrical mood, etc.). Secondarily, of interest are the outlines or indications of the educational and, more generally, socio-historical conditions. Through the insight, writing ability and critical disposition of a sensitive adolescent, the interested reader can gather information and draw conclusions about Thessaloniki and Greece during the experientially harsh, socially fluid and historically complex 1940s.

Christianopoulos, when he was writing the texts included in this publication, had begun to form his poetic status. Indicatively, in one of his essays, he closes with a passage of popular incense: “[…] it is better to be involved in ‘everything’ than to smell a little… one-sidedness”.