KIRKUS REVIEWS has named
"American Gyro" one of the Best Indie Books of August
American Gyro by Jim Zervanos follows eighteen-year-old Johnny Demos, the grandson of a Greek restaurateur in Kornfield, Pennsylvania, after a school play gives him a first taste of acting. Papou’s death leaves the Old Kornfield Inn in Uncle Nick’s hands, and Johnny is expected to take his place inside the family business. Then Mitch Mitchell, a cousin working in New York film, offers Johnny a summer position on Shadow King, a low-budget movie connected to Johnny’s screen idol, Dante Saludo. Johnny believes the project may give him access to the life he has only imagined in secret for himself from behind the restaurant bar. As filming nears, a crisis at home reaches him in New York, forcing him to measure the dream against the family that shaped him.
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‘American Gyro’ by Jim Zervanos Wins Indie Book Award
PHILADELPHIA – Greek-American Jim Zervanos’ novel, ‘American Gyro’, has received the 2026 Next Generation Indie Book Award for a novel under 70,000 words. For 20 years, the Independent Book Publishing Professionals Group has awarded the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, the largest international awards program for independent authors and publishers, to outstanding independently published books in over 80 categories.
Main Line teacher/author Jim Zervanos charms with ‘American Gyro’
Ask Bala Cynwyd’s Jim Zervanos if his latest book – a sweet, funny, coming-of-age novel about a Greek American growing up outside Philly – is autobiographical and you receive a resounding, er, not really: “The literal story is entirely made up but it’s more personal to me than anything I’ve written.”
Indeed, Zervanos calls Gyro’s protagonist, Johnny Demos, his “surrogate.”
Philly Author Jim Zervanos Releases New Novel “American Gyro”, A Greek-American Coming-of-Age Story
There is something familiar about Johnny Demos, the young protagonist at the center of American Gyro, the new novel from Philadelphia writer Jim Zervanos. Maybe it is the small-town diner run by a Greek immigrant Papou. It could be the push and pull between family obligation and the dream of something bigger. Or maybe it is simply that Johnny feels like someone we have all known in our own Greek-American circles.