My old man kicked me out of the house the day after my twentieth birthday. I ended up squatting in my school, sheltering the expectations of an entire movement and my own flesh and blood.

The loudspeakers blared slogans, electrifying the atmosphere. Sulphur and adrenaline. In the distance, police sirens could be heard, for reasons unrelated to the occasion.

I dragged myself with difficulty to the canteen. Normally, I shouldn’t be talking like this; activists aren’t supposed to drag themselves along the corridors. But I was dragging myself along. This description could be interpreted as self-criticism. Today, they prefer the term self-purification, but self-criticism certainly sounds better. At least to the left ear.

Vladimir Dimitriadis, the protagonist of Split!, returns to his twenties, to 1983, ‘when it all began’. Driven from home, he participates in the occupation of his school, experiences existential dilemmas, gambles, is arrested, falls in love, and tries to solve his livelihood problem. All this shortly before the advent of Orwell’s 1984.

Relentless humour and self-deprecation in a novel about coming of age and collective self-awareness. A chronicle and allegory of an era that foreshadows many of the country’s subsequent adventures.

Kastaniotis, 2020, 464 p.