Five Greek novels for our summer reading

Today APE-MPE has selected some of the richest Greek novels, released during 2023, and recommended them for our summer readings. General characteristics, multidimensionality, multiple objective directions and morphological care.

We begin with one of the most important sources of our prose. the Emmanuel Rhodes (1836-1904) published “Papissa Joanna” In 1866, he targeted many audiences with sarcasm. The novel has been reprinted many times, from the time of its first publication into our years, and for a few months now we have been holding hands the new, comprehensively revised and interpreted edition, by Gutenberg, edited and foreword by Dimitris Demirolis. Roidis uses the historical setting of “Papissa Joanna” as an excuse: what he is primarily concerned with is the corrupt power of his time. Based on medieval manuscripts, historical treatises, and ecclesiastical studies, which he thoroughly researched, Ruedes will transport his legend to the ninth century in which Joanna, the daughter of an English monk, will live in disguise with Fromantius in a Benedictine monastery in Germany. When her disguise is discovered, the couple will take refuge in Athens, where Brother Ioannis will gain great fame for his education and beauty. However, Joanna’s restless personality will cause her to run away again. Her destination is now Rome and the papal throne. As pope, Joanna enjoys all the pleasures of her throne. However, she falls in love with her servant and when people pressure her to indulge in the natural disasters that have ravaged the city, she will give birth to his child and die with him on the spot. Let us enjoy the ironic cleansing and sparkling spirit of Rhodes to this day – a unique relic of modern Greek literature.

In the Giorgos Skappardonis’ novel “The Sun with Pikes”According to Pataki’s publications, the time of the narrative is limited to the first half of 1931, but it tells of both the recent past and the near future of the same political period. Nationalists, Jewish organisations, communists, socialists, Marxists (Trotskyists), screws and spies, penetrating the entire former spectrum, the long arm of Bulgaria and Russia and the constant struggle between Venizelists and monarchists make up the multifaceted human obsession that runs through the pages of Skabardonis in Thessaloniki with the many languages ​​of Judaism. The Federation Organization (EEE or Tria Epsilon) and the first mass reaction against the Jews in Europe: a reaction that would link fascism directly with anti-Semitism, heralding Nazi Germany. A book in which explosive historical material becomes one with fiery and sensual, but also romantic overtones of love.

with her narrationListen to the Lion”, Pataki Publications, Soti Triantafilo Abandoning her earlier travels in foreign lands, she focuses her lens on a distinctly Athenian subject, which is none other than the life and portrait of Phokionos Negri during the last fifty years. A very complex and complex picture: on the one hand, the urban and cosmopolitan atmosphere, mixed with an invisible territory, on the other hand, degeneration and regression with the inexorable passage of time (as is always the case with the passage of time). Set her novel between 2017 and 2023, author Fokionos Negri follows the fragmented history of three generations. A story about the Leontari family: Christos Leontaris, his wife, his sons Elias and Sarantis (together we will see their wives Myrto and Mandy), Karolina, Christos’ sister-in-law, and the children who follow them.

the “Tell Her” (Police Publications) by Christos Oikonomos An extended piece of prose that, like a short novel or novella, unfolds the story of a courier, a woman working for a courier company, who during her wanderings, sometimes in Piraeus and sometimes in Chania, encounters the most unexpected events. The pace of the narrative is very dense and fast – as if it has to set the pace for the company in which the hero works. The language employed by the author, or rather that of his heroines, is similarly dense, by which they are called upon to comprehend all that the plot conceals or reveals: everyday occurrences, people’s reactions, even the drawn-out monologues of some of them when they come into contact with the courier. Language is the main feature of Steward’s book: it refers to the characters’ reactions (even if the characters are ambiguous), it illuminates the inner world of the actors, without explicitly mentioning it, it makes up comic lists with strange and unfamiliar names, it describes the social and political sosume while in places taking on subterranean (never superfluous or overflowing) poetry. Far from dry realism, but also from any attempt at a close naturalistic sketch.

Born in 1941 in Thessaloniki, Kevi Sari published her first book at the age of 82. The book was recently published by Melanie Publications “Thank you”What one wonders when starting to browse it is exactly what it is about. Sari was born in Thessaloniki, into a family of refugees from Asia Minor, but soon ended up in Athens, where she led a turbulent life, starting from the fifties to the present day. The book recounts this life in the form of her grandson’s narrative: something between an autobiography, a novel of love and family, a memoir and a history or a testimony of the changes of an entire era, as they were born into the social and public environment, to pass from “we” to “I” or as they spread, in the reverse course of life, from his recording of time to a long period in his collective environment.