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Yannis Skarimbas
(1893-1984)
Greek novelist

Stratis Tsirkas
(1911-80)
Greek novelist

Nikos Kachtitsis
(1926-70)
Greek novelist

Legenda: Oxford, 2011
£45.00 ($89.50 US)  Hardback  194pp
ISBN: 978-1-906540-83-8

How is play constituent in the formation of the Greek modernist novel? Reflecting competition with European and North American models as well as internal antagonism with more established literary genres and conservative literary cliques in Greece, some novelists during and after the 1930s employed playfulness as a means to demonstrate — or even perform — the genre’s novelty. These innovators unexpectedly came from the Greek periphery rather than Athens, and their work swiftly exchanged a passively understood realism for complex communicative patterns that actively involve the reader and educate him into bringing scraps of plot into a meaningful synthesis. Covering the formative years between 1930 and 1975 and featuring key Greek authors such as Yannis Skarimbas, Stratis Tsirkas and Nikos Kachtitsis, this is a comprehensive and innovative study of Greek modernist prose fiction and the first of its kind to appear in English.

Eleni Papargyriou is Lecturer in Modern Greek Literature at King’s College London.