MelanippeWith 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
