A modular literary hybrid made up of 21+1 miniatures, in a bilingual edition Greek//English. The text was inspired by OuLiPo, a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians experimenting with constrained writing techniques, founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais (Other notable members have included novelists Georges Perec and Italo Calvino).

Included is the digital album by Moody Alien “Nations of II” + the book in PDF format. Nations of II is an alternative version of Nations of I which is also in stock, as vinyl, here.

A5-sized paperback, 50 pages, designed by the author himself. Published in 2025.

To get a taste of the text: below is an excerpt, in fact this is the miniature that the book begins with.

Στην αρχή

Στην αρχή ήταν όλα ήσυχα κι ωραία.

Μετά… κάποιος μίλησε.

Σε ποιον απευθυνόταν;

Δε θα το μάθουμε ποτέ.

Ούτε και θα είχε, νομίζω, νόημα να ψάξουμε να βρούμε τι είπε.

Ωραία θα ήταν, δε λέω· αλλά δε γίνεται.

Θα μπορούσαμε, βέβαια, να ψάξουμε έτσι κι αλλιώς. Δε θά ’ταν άσχημα.

Το κέφι μας θα κάναμε στο κάτω-κάτω. Πολύ γρήγορα, όμως, κάποιοι θα

σχημάτιζαν την πρώτη ομάδα, με συνέπεια όλοι οι άλλοι να αισθανθούν

μαλάκες. Αυτό που θα προκαλούσε τη δημιουργία της πρώτης ομάδας θα

ήταν το κοινό πιστεύω των μελών ότι η πρώτη λέξη που ειπώθηκε από

ανθρώπινο στόμα ήταν η λέξη, ας πούμε, σιχτίρ.

Η β ́ ομάδα θα ήταν με τη λέξη ελλάς.

Η γ ́ με το μαμ.

Η δ ́ με το κακά.

Η ε ́ θα έλεγε όχι.

Καιταλοιπά.

Αλλά είπα ήδη παραπάνω ότι δε θα είχε νόημα να το ψάξουμε.

Οπότε καλύτερα ας μην το ψάξουμε.

 

In the beginning

In the beginning everything was peaceful and nice.

Then… someone spoke.

Who was he addressing?

We shall never know.

Nor would it make sense, I think, to look into what he said.

It would be nice to find out, no doubt; but it’s impossible.

We could, however, look into it anyway. It wouldn’t be bad. We’d be

having our little fun after all. Pretty soon though some of us would form

the first group, resulting in making everyone else feel like schmucks.

What would cause the creation of this first group would be its mem-

bers’ common belief that the first word to have been spoken by a human

mouth was the word, let’s say, siktir1

.

Group B would root for the word hellas2

.

C for chow.

D for poop.

E would say no.

Etcetera.

But I already said earlier that looking into it would not make sense.

Therefore we had better not look into it.

 

About the Artist

Moody Alien is an artist based in Thessaloniki, Greece. He runs the experimental label Thirsty Leaves Music since 2014. All tracks on this album were composed or improvised by him, playing processed vibraphone, marimbas & glockenspiel, as well as taking care of mixing, mastering and artwork design.