Tag: modern greek fiction

Deepfake by Makis Malafekas

~ winstonsdad ~ 6 Comments

Deepfake by Makis Malafekas

Greek Fiction

Original title – Deepfake

Translator – Jenny Steel

Source – Subscription book

I must admit it is great to see Foundry Editions bringing out a book from Greece.  Over the years, I have often felt it is a country underrepresented for its size in what we get to read in English.  This is the eighth GREEK NOVEL i have read over the time of the blog. I do have an older book I’ve been hunting for over the year, Drifting Cities, if anyone wants a reprint so I could get a cheap copy; I’d be happy. Anyway, this is the sixth book and the third noir novel by the Greek writer Makis Malafekas. He has studied art history and social anthropology, has taught comics at the Sorbonne, and has written extensively about Athens nightlife.  He set this book with the Johnny Depp trial in 2022 as a backdrop to the events in the book.

The guy next to me was likely a travel agent, with his doom-themed monologues and particular obsession with “the Gypsies”. He said we should send them to Afghanistan where they’d have the time of their lives, in fact he said we should send them “back” to Afghanistan. But when for the third time he slurped noisily at the dregs of his frappé, with the end of the straw down in the foam and ice, and said somewhat sadly, “The ice is melting in Norway, as well, fuck it…” I allowed him back into my world, and let him take his place next to me, with me, because in the end it was all my choice.

Because that’s somehow where we found ourselves. Me, and everyone else. In Norway, with the ice melting and running down our backs, all washed up in a bar somewhere in Afghanistan with expensive undrinkable coffee and a broken air conditioner by the door, having the time of our lives.  With no rhythm, no flow, no style.

Somone spouting from the news he probably read

This book is a great slice of modern noir lit fiction it appears this is the third instalment of a series around the main character in this book Michalis Krokos and he is such a typical noir character: a washed up writer a man of the Athens night that has spent a lot of time in the city and this is how he is asked by a prosecutor to help out Rebecca a trans sex worker he had known a few years earlier as she has been targeted by a right wing news site in a case of Blackmail. This leads to Krokos going undercover at the NHIT news site, a far-right group spouting out their right-wing hatred. This brings him face to face with Tsechlentidis, the boss of this news site.  They are both Athens Native and in a way this makes Michalis fit in as he also dislikes the way his city is now a tourist trap but that is all they share all this is happening as he had got caught up in the Depp trial as he has dark drives with what seems like dark ends in an athens night as we see insidce the beast of the ALT right news machines and those involved with them.

Presented with the nineties Ibiza she laughed and asked if it was one of those silent electric models or if it operated by mind power. Going up Syggrou Avenue she explained why it was that Vikings: Valhalla was crap in comparison with the original Vikings, just phoney, and I should never see it. On the way up Asklipiou Street she told me that her name was Lora, at the entrance to the building that the downtown area was intolerable and how could I put up with it in general, in the elevator that she would like to live downtown for a certain time for the experience, and in the living room she got excited that I had the Depp trial on 24/7 and said she did too, and that woman was definitely crazy and had been a disaster for him but okay, he wasn’t exactly normal either. I set out two glasses. Amber was still testifying. Johnny was talking things over with his lawyer and not giving her as much as a glance.

The Depp trial caught the eye all around the world

The book was up for the European Prize for Literature last year; this prize, over the years, has provided so many great books in English as it ever has. changing selection of books around Europe.  This book is a great slice of modern noir with a large chunk of what is wrong with Greece and Athens itself, the city that is a melting pot of people and is always full of tourists these days.  Also, the choice to use the Depp /Heard trail as a backdrop alongside alt-right news feeds shows how twisted our modern way of finding news is and what even the real news is these days.  Michalis is trying to help Rebecca find out who is blackmailing her in the sweltering heat of an Athenian summer, as everything is just simmering beneath the surface in the book as it goes.  I loved Michalis; he is a classic noir character, an imperfect human being with his own baggage, part Spade, part Marlow, and a noir comic book character.  He is the classic flawed character trying to do good.  But this book also, underneath it, raises questions about Athens as a city trying to forge its own identity in the 21st century.  Then there is the alt-right news angle and how this affects those as targets of the news but also affects those reading this trash.

Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki

~ winstonsdad ~ 2 Comments

 

Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki

Greek Fiction

Original title – Τα Ψάθινα Καπέλα [Ta psathina kapela] (1946)

Translator – Karen Van Dyk

Source – Personal copy

I’ve been a fan of the books that Penguin has been reissuing or doing new translations of great European writers. I haven’t reviewed many books from Greece, so it is a treat to review another Margarita, born in 1919; she studied law and grew up in Athens; one wonders if this book came from her own summers as the place is the countryside near Athens. I picked this up last year, and when I saw it reviewed by Sherds tube, I moved it up the TBR. Im love coming of age works I also like books set in rural areas. Palces where the world is maybe slower and different to the cities. I also love tales of siblings. This is the tale of three sisters throughout three summers.

I lie down on the couch on my stomach. She comes over and puts her hand on my forehead. I wish she would smother me in her breasts, like when I was a baby and she was still nursing me. If she knows I’m not sick why does she ask? If she really wanted to know what was wrong I might tell her. She is about to ask – her voice gets warmer, sweeter – but she draws back. There’s always a certain trepidation between us. We can’t give away secrets that we don’t have.

‘The sun must have got to you,’ she concludes.

Too bad, Mother… And I would have told you so many things about the Land of the Houyhnhms and about Mavroukos’s grave and about the things I can see from the top of the walnut tree.

‘Rodia,’ she calls. ‘A lemonade for Katerina?

the sisters and there mother!

A few years ago this had been everywhere on blogs. It captures those inter-war summers of the twenties. You feel there is maybe some of her own life. There are three sisters. Maria is the oldest and, like many older siblings, has a bold nature; thus, as she came first, she will always try to be first at everything, if that makes sense. Well, it does in my head. Infanta is maybe a typical middle sibling unknown, quite one of those people there, but we don’t fully know them. Then there is the younger sister, Katerina. She is like many a young child let to shine by others her garden reflects her full of flowers, I loved the way we get the sisters they are typical but leap of the page as characters. SHe also ca[tures the greek countryside, It drew me back to the Gerald Durrell books also set aroundthis time the countryside is drawn well. The sister her tales of the Aunt who was raped, and the other is tales of their Polish grandmother, especially. Katerina is drawn to her family tales. The girls move into womanhood during the three summers as they talk about growing love and boys. Al this as well as the simmering feeling of their mother’s lack of having a life at times adds to a book that has growing up but also in the kids the mother maybe can see her past and as the girls fall in love and marriages and children are on the horizon will it be different for the sisters. Three Summers is a tale of those inter-war years when, in some ways, the world was brighter than ever, and chance and change were just on the horizon for them.

I remember one day when Maria, Infanta, and I were looking out the window, we saw a car pull up in front of the clinic and a young couple get out – the girl didn’t look any older than Maria.

‘It won’t hurt at all, you’ll see,’ the guy was telling the girl, and she was smiling, though her forehead was covered in sweat. A few hours later the same car came and picked them up. He helped her in. Her eyes had a deep sadness about them, and her hand seemed to want to touch her belly, to check it, but she kept pulling it away, ashamed. ‘Must be an abortion, Maria said, letting out such a screech you’d have thought they’d taken her insides out

Nicely observed how the sisters live in the world

I loved this book. It is full of the feeling of warm summers where the world is carefree, but still, shit happens. Family members have been raped things happened to our parents and grandparents and the world around them. In the books, the grece she writes about is gone. The summers they spent are gone . It also has a classic love triangle with the youngest daughter and her love for a sea captain and an astronomer, David Simmers. I hope to take this if I go on holiday to Greece soon and spend a warm summer evening drifting away in the three summers in this book drift over me as we see the three girls become women. Sat on a chair in the sun I hope I will do it one day and then review it again. Have you read this book? Do you have any other books from Greece I should read?

Winston score – A three summers, three sisters, and a world long gone as we see them fall in and out of love and grow.