Murder in Athens - Yannis Maris

From Edgar Alan Poe’s 1841 “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and Sherlock Holmes adventures, to the “Golden Age” of American hard-boiled detection in the early 19th century and up to the subversive post-Cold War detective stories, crime and villains gained prominence through fictional accounts of trans- gressions. It has been argued (and this paper very much relies on this assumption) that detective novels draw par excellence on the reservoir of evil to frame the social and/or political world it is produced in (i.e. corruption, ruthless corporations, organised crime, and any kind of sects or gangs)6. Yet, while this remark marks the point of departure for my argument, I wish to also call this assumption into question in the third case study I am looking at and to indicate that the under- standing of how moral evil is articulated in detective fiction is far more complex and nuanced. I will argue that detective stories not only speak to cultural and political realities of contemporary Greece but they also unveil the vulnerability of distinctions between the criminal and non-criminal world, revisit pervasive evils of the past, and even undermine the quest for the truth itself. To illustrate my argument, I will look at three fairly different case studies; the crime short-stories Ελληνικά εγκλήματα, 3 [Greek Crimes, 3] (2009), Marlena Politopoulou’s historical detective novel Η μνήμη της πολαρόιντ [Polaroid Memory] (2009) and Vassilis Danellis’s “postmodern” roman noir Άνθρωπος στο τρένο [Man in the Train] (2016). What all three works have in common is the writers’ progressive stance on morality and evildoing as well as the upending of many of the formulaic conventions of the popular detection.

Encounters in Greek and Irish Literature. Creativity, Translations and Critical Perspectives, ed. P. Nikolaou, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, σ. 80-95, 2020

How does this quartet of authors invited at ‘Novel Encounters’ respond to the Greek crisis? How do Christos Chrissopoulos (b. 1968), Panos Karnezis (b. 1967), Sophia Nikolaidou (b. 1968) and Ersi Sotiropoulos (b. 1953) relate to its conditions—if at all? Let us consider a few examples from their recent output, starting with the more directly political character of Nikolaidou’s books, turning later to the more indirect readings of how politics and fiction relate, as manifested in Sotiropoulos’s later work. In Chrissopoulos’s case, current realities are reflected through layered connections of novelistic and philosophical discourse, as well as through interrogating other forms of art. Finally, Karnezis’s recent fiction arguably turns its focus from earlier, oblique perceptions of Greek history and culture towards a more universal perspective.

Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 1999

Review essay solicited by The Journal of Modern Greek Studies 17:1, 1999, 170-179 In 1991, the Kedros publishing house put out a set of Greek novels in English translation. By 1996, Kedros had published three such sets of reasonably priced1 paperback editions, and so raised the number of titles in the series to twenty-seven. All the works are by Greek writers, the majority contemporary, and all were published originally in Greek by Kedros. We have, then, the "Kedros Modern Greek Writers Series" (emphasis mine), comprising the following titles: Petros Abatzoglou's What does Mrs. Freeman Want (translated by Kay Cicellis), Aris Alexandrou's Mission Box (translated by Robert Crist), Sotiris Dimitriou's Woof, Woof, Dear Lord (translated by Leo Marshall), Maro Douka's Fool's Gold (translated by Roderick Beaton), Eugenia Fakinou's Astradeni (translated by H. E. Criton), Andreas Franghias's The Courtyard (translated by Martin McKinsey), Costis Gimosoulis's Her Night on Red (translated by Philip Ramp), Marios [End Page 170] Hakkas's Kaisariani and the Elegant Toilet (translated by Amy Mims), Giorgos Heimonas's The Builders (translated by Robert Crist), Yorgos Ioannou's Good Friday Vigil (translated by Peter Mackridge and Jackie Willcox), Iakovos Kambanellis's Mauthausen (translated by Gail Holst-Warhaft), Alexandros Kotzias's Jaguar (translated by H. E. Criton), Menis Koumandareas's Koula (translated by Kay Cicellis), Margarita Liberaki's Three Summers (translated by Karen Van Dyck), Giorgos Maniotis's Two Thrillers (translated by Nicholas Kostis), Christoforos Milionis's Kalamás and Achéron (translated by Marjorie Chambers), Costoula Mitropoulou's The Old Curiosity Shop on Tsimiski Street (translated by Elly Petrides), Kostas Mourselas's Red Dyed Hair (translated by Fred A. Reed), Aristotelis Nikolaidis's Vanishing Point (translated by John Leatham), Alexis Panselinos's Betsy Lost (translated by Caroline Harbouri), Spyros Plaskovitis's The Façade Lady of Corfu (translated by Amy Mims), Vangelis Raptopoulos's The Cicadas (translated by Fred A. Reed), Yannis Ritsos's Iconostasis of Anonymous Saints (translated by Amy Mims), Aris Sfakianakis's The Emptiness Beyond (translated by Caroline Harbouri), Dido Sotiriou's Farewell Anatolia (translated by Fred A. Reed), Stratis Tsirkas's Drifting Cities (translated by Kay Cicellis), and Alki Zei's Achilles' Fiancée (translated by Gail Holst-Warhaft).

Were the Greek novels titled according to a consistent convention? This article confronts the view that the original titles were always historiographical in form (Assyriaka, Lesbiaka, Aithiopika, etc.) and that readers were thus steered to expect, in the first instance, realistic narrative. Examining the evidence in detail, it argues that the formula the novels were likeliest to have shared was ta kata + girl's name (or girl's + boy's names). On this basis, it is concluded that what the titles of the novels promised was primarily invasive narratives of private life. 4 Rohde 1914, 263-64 (with 263, n. 1, and Schmid's note pp. 616-18); Perry 1967, 167-68. Such titles are common in the third volume of FGrH. 5 See, e.g., Morgan 1993, 197-98, using historiographical elements in the titles (though he accepts more variation than Henrichs) to reinforce his argument that the novels aim at a quasi-historical form of realism. Julian Ep. 89b 301b Bidez is sometimes cited (e.g., by Morgan) for the view that the novels were §n flstor¤aw e ‡dei . . . plãsmata, but the passage does not in fact refer to novels (see appendix below).

A workshop generously funded by the Sophia Scopetéa Fund to promote the study of Modern Greek at the University of Copenhagen. My paper is title "Narrative re-appropriations and the modality of the “Ottoman past” in Modern Greek fiction". For the purpose of answering the question of how the past is (re)imagined in contemporary literature, I bring to bear Hayden White’s conceit of plot as the meta-historical element of historiographic narration, a conceit that –taking into account recent reworkings and critisism– proves useful when employed in the analysis of fictional works that attempt to reconfigure the past / a “practical past” for the symbolic economy of the present. For the purposes of the workshop, I plan to focus on three works dealing more specifically with Enlightenment and its legacy: in the novels by Athina Kakouri (Tēs tychēis to machairi, 1989), Nikos Themelis (Gia mia syntrofia anamesa mas, 2005), and Thomas Skassis (To roloi tēs skias, 2004) the past / national history is emploted as a family novel and/or a bildungsroman· it is exactly this “ideology of form” that the paper will question.

Cross-Cultural …, 2011

Macdonald's presentation of the crime and its detection in The Goodbye Look shows how he finds in detective fiction a logical genre that will enable him to study human motivations and actions in general. Instead of imitating the hard-boiled detective writers who precede him, Macdonald uses the Oedipus theme in this novel to explore the American psyche and to transform detective fiction into a new kind of fiction which is not only about exposing criminals but also about redeeming the innocent.

European History Quarterly, 2000

2019

Integrating the Nordic noir in the modern Greek culture: the case of Vagelis Giannisis From the beginning of the 21th century a worldwide renewal of interest for both the creative/ cultural industries and the audiences towards crime fiction has been observed. This turn of interest affects the European countries and their cultural interrelations. Greece closely follows this revival through a variety of medias (publications, cinema, TV, social networks), at all levels of the production, circulation and consumption process. An interesting case of this phenomenon is the literary work of Vagelis Giannisis (b. 1988). His first novel, entitled "Hatred", was published in 2014, introducing the police inspector Anders Economides. Until nowadays, Giannisis has published four more novels, starring Economides. The main feature of Giannisis’ work is the integration of the Nordic noir trend into a modern Greek context. Therefore, we will briefly but spherically analyze the transcultural characteristics of this literary series from the point of you of: • Production: Giannisis writes his novels in Swedish and Greek, so we will study the authorial intentions and strate- gies, based in open interviews with the writer and also his Greek and maybe Swedish publishers. • Representation: Inspector Anders Economides is a Greek born and living in Sweden, thus the representation through the stylistic and structural characteristics of the Nordic noir is carried out as an interaction mainly of the dark sides of Swedish political and social life with elements of Greek culture and mentality. We will examine the discours of the novels, focussing on the narratives’ sites of memory (lieux de mémoire ). • Reception: Giannisis’ novels are quite successful in the Greek readership, which interactively discusses his work on social media. Our survey will be based, not only on the empirical data of the activity of the creative readers on social media, but also on their communication with the writer, which probably affects diversely his work.

Perspectives, 2018

Crime fiction has been constantly present in Greek popular culture, mainly through translations published in newspapers, magazines and in book form, from the nineteenth century to the present day. While the Anglo-American influence on the development of Greek popular literature as a whole has undoubtedly been paramount since the beginning of the twentieth century, other national traditions have also played an important role. In this article, I provide an overview of cultural transfers between Greek, and French and Italian crime fiction in the twentieth and twenty-first century, taking into account the major influence of French culture and literature in Greece since the Enlightenment, and the common emergence of a new French and Italian crime fiction in translation after the 1990s. In particular, I look at the interplay between translated crime fiction and indigenous Greek texts, focusing on the emergence and consecration of the genre in relation to key texts, agents and events. Drawing on a definition of translation as rewriting, I examine interlingual, as well as intersemiotic practices, showing how the history of the genre in Greece has been (re)written through translation.

The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 2006