A moonlit night and Prometheus, a student of mathematics, is wandering about the ruins of ancient Nekyia, near the source of the Acheron River, when suddenly his body is convulsed with strange pains.
A few hours earlier, in the golden landscape of mid-day he had met the ivory-skinned girl, Iris, an English student who was preparing a research paper for her course. At once they fell in mutual love.
That night of the pains becomes the point of departure of subsequent events.
Prometheus, a devotee of mathematics, is attempting to interpret the fate of the world in mathematical terms, to uncover the fate of his own life. But he is trapped in strange events that bring him face to face with the supernatural, the incomprehensible, and his plans are thwarted.
The story begins on a winter morning, when Prometheus, sleepless and weary after a painful adventure with the homeless in the park, is standing to one side in the courtyard of the university, watching his fellow students as they hurry to class, under umbrellas.
A student with a short pony-tail and a black shirt that does not become wet in the rain is staring at him. He has a wound on his temple and blood is flowing from the wound down into the streamlets of rain.
He tries to approach him, but the unknown student disappears, as if he dissolved into the morning.
He continues his wandering and finds himself before a stable. He passes through the fence and, breathless, lies down to sleep. When he awakens he sees a horse bending over him, as if it wants to warm him with its breath.
Soon he will learn from the owner of the stable that the horse is mourning because a short time ago its rider, a student of cellular biology, was murdered just outside the university.
Prometheus learns that the student was murdered on the spot where he saw the strange student with blood on his temple. And he realizes that the horse, although unbroken, approached him gently because it smelled the soul of its murdered rider on him.
There, in the stable, in the short time he is with the grieving horse, he tries to bring the events of his life into some order, to analyze them, to find a meaning.
His adventure begins after the night of the moist moonlight, when the pain appeared in his body. And events unfold in his thought. He had left his home secretly to escape harsh treatment by his stepfather and the latter’s son; both of them hated him.
On the first day, when he went to register at the university—he was an excellent student—his backpack, which contained all the money his mother had given him for his studies, was stolen.
His mathematics professor, who valued him highly for his genius, gave him work at the university so that he could complete his studies.
There he meets Herman Sotiriou, a lecturer in Biology, who is of German ancestry. Sotiriou is a dark, malicious figure, who will stir all the powers of evil in order to gain possession of a valuable ancient relic. It is the Sacred Chart, which is kept in the monastery of the Blessed Porphyrios. On its nine parchment pages are inscribed symbols representing all the genetic secrets of life. The secrets of the immortality of the gods.
No one was able to decipher those precious symbols with the exception of Avgoustinos Mavroleon, a boy who grew up in the monastery and who studied cellular biology. He was the rider of the grieving horse. He was the student wearing the black shirt, who stood in the rain, whose blood flowed into the streamlets of rain. It is he, Avgoustinos Mavroleon, who will come down from the other world to guide Prometheus toward discovery of the truth. It will be revealed that Herman Sotiriou and his international conspirators murdered Avgoustinos in order to steal from his computer his work on the deciphered symbols that spoke of genetic secrets.
Prometheus succeeds in recovering the work of Avgoustinos. Meanwhile, Herman is preparing a celebratory announcement concerning the ancient wisdom inscribed on the Sacred Chart, which enlightens genetic matter. But he announces that he will not reveal all the precious secrets. The significant secrets, those concerning the immortality of the gods, he will keep for himself and for the international conspiracy to which he belongs—a conspiracy with the fascist slogan “We are the password of natural selection…We open the door to selective survival…” And he appropriates Avgoustinos’ work entirely and prepares to announce it as his own.
Prometheus finds himself in a terrible dilemma: will he reveal that Herman stole the work and, most significant, plans to exploit its ancient knowledge for his own benefit? Or will he abandon his efforts, as powerless against their omnipotence, allowing this magnificent gift of the gods to man to be lost?
The hour of the official announcement of the Sacred Chart and its secrets approaches and Prometheus is present in the hall. Avgoustinos, wearing the black shirt, is also in the hall, but only Prometheus is able to see him. After terrible heart-wrenching Prometheus stands and reveals the truth: that the information imparted by Herman is stolen from the work of Avgoustinos and that Herman and his conspiracy murdered him in order to profit from that knowledge.
Events of total violence ensue. Prometheus will be imprisoned. He will be denigrated. He will be ill-treated. But he is happy that he helped to bring the ancient knowledge to mankind.
The plot of this promethean myth that takes place in our time includes the secrets of genius as experienced by my hero—precious secrets that transform the fleeting moments of everyday life into immortal essence. There is the great love of the ivory-skinned girl, a love that is lived as sacrifice and as catharsis. There is the perception of the violence of our times in its rawest form. Finally, there is the power of the inexplicable that controls the fate of our lives.
Prometheus is freed from the snares of fate. In his struggle he overcomes all the stages of human pain—pain or punishment for the hubris he has committed with his genius—and he reaches catharsis.
A homeless man whom he had met in the days when he wandered in the park, an intelligent man used to chaos, whom Prometheus called Otto of the Wandering Chaos, will help his thoughts to find the courage born of utter hopelessness, and will also lead him to the purity of self-knowledge.
He, Otto of the Wandering Chaos, the hopeless lover of the absolute, who holds to the philosophy of Spinoza in order to remain free, who with his refusal to give in to the vulgarity of the status quo, develops his own philosophy of persistence in the existing, comprises the opposite pole of vulgarity of present day society.
The novel “Moonlight” or “Prometheus” is all translated into English