Emmanuel Roidis, a writer with an excellent education, a linguist and in constant contact with the movement of ideas in Europe, with a Western vision, with a critical and scintillating spirit, with a corrosive and subversive humor, with narrative comfort, with linguistic plasticity and grace, can considered one of the most intelligent Greeks, one of our first "European" writers and a transitional bridge from the Old to the New Athenian school. The stories presented in this edition under (our) title "Animal Stories" and which tell exactly the story of a chicken, a dog, a cat, a horse, a monkey, we think can form a single whole, on the one hand, on the other hand, a good sample of the writing virtues of Emmanuel Roidis. (from the introduction by Kostas Balaska)