Alexis Tsipras’ new memoir “Ithaca” is far more than a personal recounting of his years in power from 2015 to 2019.
It is an uncomfortable mirror held up to the political culture of modern Greece—a culture marked by selective memory, internal rivalries, and a striking tendency to trivialise issues of national weight.
Tsipras spares few in his narrative. Former ministers and close associates come under heavy criticism: Pavlos Polakis, Nikos Pappas, Alexis Haritsis, and Zoe Konstantopoulou. From outside SYRIZA, Stavros Theodorakis, Manolis Othonas, Panos Kammenos, and Stefanos Kasselakis openly challenge the accuracy of his recollections. Meanwhile, Adonis Georgiadis, Dora Bakoyannis, and government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis view Ithaca as confirmation of Tsipras’ “leader-centric” character—one who refuses to accept responsibility and reshapes the past in his own favour.
Yet the most revealing element of the book is not the political gossip, the personal disputes, or the colourful exchanges. It is Tsipras’ account of the Prespa Agreement. He recounts that during the height of the 2019 protests, a SYRIZA MP told him privately: “So the government will fall over a bloody name?”
The vulgarity is not what shocks. What shocks is the meaning. That phrase exposes a worldview in which the Macedonian question—rooted in bloodshed, liberation, and the historical continuity of the Greek nation—was dismissed by some as a trivial electoral nuisance. For a segment of the political class, Macedonia was not a matter of identity or sacrifice, but an inconvenience.
This moment, more than any anecdote in the book, speaks to the deeper structural crisis of Greece’s political system. When national issues are seen as “bloody names,” governance ceases to be an act of stewardship and becomes an exercise in balancing personal survival against public duty. It is this mindset, critics argue, that has shaped —and ultimately limited—the fate of Greece.
The other disputes, while dramatic, are secondary to this fundamental truth. Stavros Theodorakis claims Tsipras deliberately delayed their post-election meeting in 2015 to secure a coalition with Panos Kammenos. Kammenos himself highlights what he calls the “key moment” of the era: the phone call with Barack Obama following the referendum. Manolis Othonas rejects outright Tsipras’ version of a conversation with Fofi Gennimata. Stefanos Kasselakis launches a deeply personal attack, describing Ithaca as “a laundromat text that will sink like the Titanic.”
These reactions illuminate the fractures and mutual suspicions that defined the period—but they do not alter the book’s most important revelation.
Ithaca provides an unfiltered view, often unintentionally, of how power operates in Greece: how history is edited, how alliances are built and betrayed, and how issues of national identity are often reduced to backstage calculations.
In the end, the real legacy of the book is not the disputes it reignited, but the painful admission—spoken by one anonymous MP—that Macedonia, a land tied to sacrifice and identity, was treated by some not as heritage but as a nuisance. And that, perhaps, is the most damning verdict of all.
