This does not come, however, at the expense of clarity or freshness. Papamarkos is a first-rate story-teller, and the narrator of each story speaks in his own, distinct voice (the stories are all told in the first person singular) with remarkable directness and candour. This is the great charm of the collection: it reads with refreshing ease, but provokes, and warrants, a good deal of thought from the reader.
Not least in the mind of the reader is how this collection relates to the current state of ‘crisis’ in Greece. The recurring themes of remaking, and of death, bring to mind the country that is on its knees and desperately looking for a way out. Thinly veiled social commentary can be found, the stories raise questions about Greece’s past, present and future.
Each story in the collection submits to numerous such interpretations, whilst maintaining a striking and dramatic storyline. The variety of approach, coupled with unity of theme, is thus a key feature of the book. In this vein, an important hallmark of Papamarkos’ style, which maintains the reader’s interest, is his use of the unexpected. Each story contains an element of surprise, a surreal or magical feature. This finds parallels in the work of Etgar Garet, while the author’s post-modern approach and reworking of motifs from the Greek folk tradition is reminiscent of Italo Calvino’s early work. There are, furthermore, discernible influences of Bret Easton Ellis, in Papamarkos’ characters, as well as of Borges.
The collection is the work of an author in his prime: Papamarkos has created a new voice, but one which is consistent and mature.
English and Italian extracts available
Selection of reviews
…MetaPoesis is not limited to the world of the narrator. Papamarkos opens up his texts to the Ancient Greek perception of the "Other", its problematic reflection, the sight and mirror of Vernan for example, the "dialogues of the dead", but also to the oriental quest for the "familiar" and the "different". In this way, he transforms the primordial myth into the archetypical subtext of every civilization, within the context of which takes place the old debate of the "Self" and the "Other", of the natural and the metaphysical, of life and death. He also processes the language of fables and folk literature, exposing it to the dark intertextuality of romanticism and modernism…
--Titika Dimitroulia, Kathimerini, 18/11/2012
…The game of life and death, revenge as an act of honour and deliverance, the question of identity – since often the victim is the perpetrator and vice versa – dual personality, death and freedom and other existential questions, consistent with the spirit of our times, but at the same time crafted with care and attention both in the economy of every short story and the atmosphere in which Dimosthenis Papamarkos immerses the reader…
--Yiorgos Perantonakis, Bookpress.gr, 16/09/2012
Dimosthenis Papamarkos’ collection of short stories is a powerful and robust one. It is a book about violence as a redemptive dead-end, a book, finally, that visits our colourful linguistic tradition with moderation and respect.
--Grigoris Mpekos, To Vima, 09/09/2012
