Penetrating the unhealed wounds caused by the war situations within the walls of the family to its members, paralleling them to those left by the war (in this case the civil war in the former Yugoslavia), he composes a deeply human, finely crafted, novel piece by piece. Title of “The last bear of the forest” (published by Kihli), which has been awarded the Novella prize of the magazine “The Reader”. Akis Papantonis talks to “P” about his book and his writing universe.
-How did you come up with the idea for your new novel and why did you choose to set it in the 80s and 90s – the one with the civil war raging in Bosnia?
The 80’s and 90’s are the pot of my youth memories. I aspire to write for my generation, so this context is almost inevitable. The civil war in the former Yugoslavia on the other hand – especially massacres like Srebrenica – are events that we experienced at the time in a completely distorted way. Hence my desire to revisit those years and talk about the ta
-How did you come up with the idea for your new novel and why did you choose to set it in the 80s and 90s – the one with the civil war raging in Bosnia?
The 80’s and 90’s are the pot of my youth memories. I aspire to write for my generation, so this context is almost inevitable. The civil war in the former Yugoslavia on the other hand – especially massacres like Srebrenica – are events that we experienced at the time in a completely distorted way. Hence my desire to revisit those years and talk about the events that defined us – probably in our absence.
-History with the traumas it causes to people “connects” with the stories of your heroes Nikos (Nikiforos) and Theodoris, who grow up, carrying their own deep traumas. What drew you to this connection?
None of us exists in a vacuum. History, directly or indirectly, determines the everyday stories of people. This inescapable conversation of the global with the personal—which of course will never cease—occupies all my books: Ceausescu’s Romania in The Karyotype, the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in Shallow Water, Shadows, the burning Balkans in this my latest novella.
-Each chapter, with letters of the alphabet, “opens” with a punch-in-the-stomach testimony of men and women, who recount the suffering of the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. Will you tell us about this particular text chat?
These testimonies, although altered, are true. I wanted them to preface each chapter, so that on the one hand they function as a parallel or as a counterpoint for each scene and on the other hand they remind the tragic historical context within which the relationship between the two brothers, Nikos/Nikiforos and Theodore, is formed.
– Silence falls like a thick, impenetrable, veil over the relationships of the family members of your story. What is the challenge, perhaps even the difficulty, in capturing it?
I have a special addiction to innuendo. I love everything that is implied between sentences, in long pauses, behind lowered gazes. So I wanted such a veil of speaking silence to dominate the book. The difficulty lies in not succumbing to the ease of having your characters say what they want to say – how well I did that is left to the readers to judge
-A dysfunctional family, with the absent father – “immigrant” according to the mother – and the mother declaring her presence, mainly, with the smoke of the permanent cigarette on her lips. What drives your interest in penetrating and exploring these complex parent-child relationships, which often, unfortunately, create monsters?
As a parent I recognize the difficulties, but also the emotional reward of these complex indeed relationships. I dissect them not to deconstruct them, but to remind (me) how decisive they are. The love we give is the only legacy that does not wear out.
-Nikos-Nikephoros, initiated as a child into the extreme right, who leaves to fight in Yugoslavia, represses his sexual specificity, something that lingers in the narrative, without ever being named. Is perhaps (also) this internal struggle of his the reason for the path he has chosen?
I don’t know if I have more answers than he himself gives as a character in the book. The main thing for Nikiforos is “belonging”; the main thing for Nikos is to love and be loved – all regardless of the cost.
-For your youngest protagonist, Theodore, the last bear in the forest was his brother-protector. You, have-have you had one?
I am the older brother in real life (my sister is three years younger). Despite all that, as a first-year student in Biology at AUTH, the status of “last bear in the forest” was voluntarily assumed by my father’s older brother who lived in the city. For him – and for his premature death – I once wrote a short story with the same title (published on the website popaganda.gr).
-How do you write, really (times, place, conditions)?
My first book, the novella Karyotype, was written mostly at night. Over the years, however, my endurance (phew, no one stays young forever) and my life circumstances (my two sons were born, who are now teenagers) changed. So now I write and translate early in the morning, steal hours during the day, make myself comfortable on the couch or on the train and on the plane or even on the edge of the dining room. In any case, I will clumsily squeeze the writing into the crevices of everyday life.
-Writing, translation, reading literature. What does each one mean to you?
I am a biologist who writes literature, but mostly I am a biologist who reads literature. Writing does not exist without reading and reading does not exist without Greek literature: I read as much Greek production as I can – I find it unthinkable that one can write in Greek and not read what is written and what has been written. As for the translation, it is for me another cord that connects me to the Greek language, a constant exercise of style (you learn at the same time the author you are translating and your authorial self) but also of humility at the same time (admiring the foreign language text, while dissecting it translations). I will not, I hope, stop doing any of the three.
-The Greece of 2024 through the eyes of a Greek who lives and works for years in Germany? (s.s. professor of Epigenetics at the Medical School of the University of Göttingen).
Greece is and will be the country where I grew up, the country where my parents, my friends, my sister and my nieces live, the place I want my sons to know – with its good and bad. I didn’t leave Greece (already 16 years ago) to escape from something, but to do research as best I can. I owe a lot to the Greek university and, someday, somehow, I will repay the debt.
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