iris literary agency

Melanippe

Written by

Melanippe is an existential thriller, unfolding between magic realism and raw myth. The heroine, confined since the day she was born, hides her double nature inside a bizarre body.

With her paper planes, a pizza-boy, a wannabe lover, a mother, and a window to keep her company, this unique creature is fighting her one-of-a-kind battle towards freedom. Welcoming this second book by Yiayiannou, the critics noted an elective affinity between Melanippe and Kafka’sMetamorphosis, as well as Lagerkvist’s The Dwarf. The roots of the character Melanippe, however, can be traced back to two lost tragedies written by Euripides. If the ancient “Melanippe” tragedies still existed, she probably would have been famous as a kind of anti-Medea; as a rational creature, a guardian of life, who used language as her weapon, even in a dystopian Greece. Contemporary Melanippe comes to creatively reconstruct the myth, filling old gaps and inevitably opening new ones, while taking the leap towards her true identity.

Smili, 2012, 118 p.

English translation available

Spanish extract available

Yiayiannou Maria

Maria Yiayiannou (b. 1978, Athens) studied Media & Communication, Cultural Management and Philosophy of Art. She has worked with art-galleries as a curator and an art-theorist, with ad-agencies as a copywriter and a pr manager and with the Press, writing articles on visual culture and books. She has published four literature books (a “folk” short stories collection- 2006, a theatre play- 2013, and two novellas- 2012 and 2015) as well as two extensive essays on contemporary art (in a series of books about Postmodern Art).

Other texts she has written (essays, short stories, poems, artists’ presentations) can be found in collective books, various magazines and exhibition catalogues, as well as on her web page: www.mariayiayiannou.wordpress.com. Between 2009 and 2014, one play, three monologues and an extract of a larger play of hers have been staged in various scenes of Athens (Greek Art Theatre Karolos Koun, Neos Kosmos Theatre, Numismatic Museum, Camp Art Space etc.) while a radio-play of hers participated at the International Urti Radio Gran Prix. For the period 2014-2015 she was a member of the board of administration of the International Theatre Institute (ITI).

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