Orthokostá

Orthokostá
Author: Thanassis Valtinos
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2016-06-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0300221037

First published in 1994 to a storm of controversy, Thanassis Valtinos’s probing novel Orthokostá defied standard interpretations of the Greek Civil War. Through the documentary-style testimonies of multiple narrators, among them the previously unheard voices of right-wing collaborationists, Valtinos provides a powerful, nuanced interpretation of events during the later years of Nazi occupation and the early stages of the nation’s Civil War. His fictionalized chronicle gives participants, victims, and innocent bystanders equal opportunity to bear witness to such events as the burning of Valtinos’s home village, the detention and execution of combatants and civilians in the monastery of Orthokostá, and the revenge killings that ensued. As a transforming work of literature, this book redefined established methods of fiction; as a work of revisionist history, it changed the way Greece understands its own past. Now, through this masterful translation of Orthokostá, English-language readers have full access to the tremendous vitality of Valtinos’s work and to the divisive Civil War experiences that continue to echo in Greek politics and events today.

Thanassis Valtinos: New Moon: Day One

Thanassis Valtinos: New Moon: Day One
Author: Thanassis Valtinos
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2024-09-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781942281351

In a tour de force of innovation, memory, and distillation, Thanassis Valtinos shifts the literary ground from yet another angle. Set in a provincial capital, in the penultimate throes of the Greek Civil War, New Moon: Day One is semi-autobiographical, a tale of two protagonists on the brink of manhood. They speak in bluntly human tones, but in precincts that echo of death the impulse to life is declared. In the very presence of Thanatos, Eros is adamant. The elements of a screenplay are recast by Valtinos as a novel. Interposed with bursts of dialogue, and reading like stage directions, intimate scenes alternate with a wide-screen view. Fade-outs, as blank pages, punctuate the whole. Though the gaze is that of a camera -- of pristine detachment -- the energy is propulsive. The thread of a breathless suspense is drawn through a complex collage. It seems to precisely catch the rhythm of human becoming. --Thanassis Valtinos

Deep Blue Almost Black

Deep Blue Almost Black
Author: Thanasēs Valtinos
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 132
Release: 1997
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780810117662

A collection of stories set in Greece. The title story is on the burden of memory, August '48 is on the Greek civil war that followed World War II, and Peppers and Flowerpots is a police interview during the 1960s military dictatorship.

Greece

Greece
Author: Artemis Leontis
Publisher: Traveler's Literary Companions
Total Pages: 296
Release: 1997
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Twenty-four short stories and prose poems by modern Greek writers. The subjects range from ancient mythology to World War, II to present-day surrealism. Fifth in a traveler's literary companion series.

Theo Angelopoulos

Theo Angelopoulos
Author: Thodōros Angelopoulos
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2001
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781578062164

A collection of interviews following the Greek director's career from his innovative debut film Reconstruction in 1971 to his triumph at the Cannes Film Festival in 1998, when his film Eternity and a Day was awarded the Golden Palm

Angelic & Black

Angelic & Black
Author: David Connolly
Publisher: Cosmos Publishing (NJ)
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2006
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

OBERIU

OBERIU
Author: Eugene Ostashevsky
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2006
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0810122936

It was a movement so artfully anarchic, and so quickly suppressed, that readers only began to discover its strange and singular brilliance three decades after it was extinguished-and then only in samizdat and emigre publications.

History and National Ideology in Greek Postmodernist Fiction

History and National Ideology in Greek Postmodernist Fiction
Author: Gerasimus Katsan
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2013
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1611475937

History and National Ideology in Greek Postmodernist Fiction investigates the ways postmodernist literary techniques have been adopted by Greek authors. Taking into consideration the global impetus of postmodernism, the book examines its local implications. Framed by a discussion of major postmodernist thinkers, the book argues for the ability of local cultures to retain their uniqueness in the face of globalization while at the same time adapting to the new global situation. The combination of external global influences and the specific internal concerns of Greek national literature makes the emergence of postmodernism in Greece distinctive from that of other national contexts. The book engages in larger theoretical debates about the "crisis" of national identity in the context of postmodern globalization and the resurgence of nationalist ideology either as a response to globalization or the exigencies of historical events. This crisis has been brought on in part by the very postmodernist and poststructuralist questioning of the ideologies upon which nation-states construct themselves. The central argument of the book is that postmodernist Greek writers question the idea of national identity based on both the impact of globalization and a reexamination of the discourses of national ideology: they suggest a turn away from the traditional concerns with cultural homogeneity towards an acceptance of multiplicity and diversity, which is reflected through experimentation with postmodernist literary techniques. Consequently, the unifying idea of this book is "national identity" as it is reconfigured in recent contemporary novels. My analysis incorporates the view that metafiction is a "borderline" or "marginal" discourse that exists on the boundary between fiction and criticism. The book illuminates the connections between the formal concerns of contemporary authors and the larger debates and philosophical underpinnings of postmodernism in general.