Census

Set in the middle of the twentieth century in a mountainous Cypriot village, Census follows the pregnancy of cancer patient Maria. She conceives after a night with the angelically handsome Michael, visiting from Patmos, the island of John s Revelation. The gestation culminates in the nativity of an invisible Christ in a Nicosia clinic. Though incorporeal, scentless and colourless, the life-giving force that is liberated from Maria s womb, brings about premature efflorescence and a diffusion of aromas across the clinic s flower pots. Akin to healing energy, it begins curing the spiritual and psychosomatic ailments of all those it overshadows, urging the island s medical community to dedicate their life to studying and utilising this unknown new energy. Census is both a heretic allegory of the nativity and a cathartic retort to the satanic messages of Roman Polanski's renowned horror film Rosemary s Baby. Boasting repeated editions in Greece and Cyprus, this award-winning novel by Panos Ioannides, replete with magical realism, is riveting in terms of conception and execution: a sacred metaphysical thriller that redeems and purifies the reader. A masterpiece in the art of fiction and the recipient of the Cyprus National Prize for Literature, 1973. "