Interview with Iuli Tsakalou
What does the title “Our children” refer to?
The title usually comes and “snaps” at the end. “Our children” are our children, the generation that will soon take over from us. They are also the people with whom we share a common code, ideas, thoughts and life decisions. There are many more, which the reader will discover as the story unfolds.
Would you like to share with us the main thrust of the novel?
Our Children is a novel for two generations. For our children’s generation, who grew up locked in their rooms, but also for our own generation, who believed that we would become better than our parents. And now we see our children growing up, making their mistakes, coming forward. It is a story regarding what we know, but also regarding what we will never know. Because every generation thinks they are protecting their children. But if we listen to the story from the other side, we will see that children also protect parents from things they will never suspect – and fortunately. Often music is the code, the key that opens closed doors. So, along with all that we said, “Our Children” is also a story regarding a rap group, regarding dreams that take revenge, regarding children saved by music.
Who are all these kids filling stadiums for a rap musician most of us haven’t even heard of?
These children are our sons and daughters, our students, our neighbors’ children, our friends’ children. They also live their lives, have their opinions and opinions, listen to their music, have their own codes. As of course we had when we were their age. Music usually gives the key: it is the way we have to perceive this raw nerve of a society that pulsates in the stadiums, in the stadiums, in the squares. What happens where children gather, as well as where they stay alone, closing the door in our faces, the book narrates. As well as the thoughts, lives, anxieties and beating hearts of our own generation.
Only children: The new reality/normality, now, in Greece? Why “this generation has failed and the cost is heavy, because the anvil plays from below and the hammer from above” (Stixoima)?
Yes, only children are the new normal, which is why the heroes and heroines of the book are mostly only children. Like single parent families it seems to be the new reality. The Stixoima couplet you mention – and gives the title to a chapter in the book – describes in a few words a sensation that resides in our stomachs. And to complete it, I will quote the couplet of Novel 729, which gives the title to another chapter: “I have a teenager in my soul, who is still in high school.” But one does not exclude the other, we also live with our contradictions, don’t we?
Dominant in this novel are the characters, Valia, Zoe, Iordanis, the cops, good or bad, Kostis, Lenia, Fotis, Simos, Che, Stefanka the Vulgara, the good mother of the bad of a child. Which hero/heroine of your play do you get closer to and why?
I don’t think I can answer that. The author does not just play a role within the narrative. In order to write history, another hero is made each time. He wears the body and thoughts of this hero, he does not represent him. The opposite roles are usually more exciting. But as long as I am Valia (the mother), I am also Kostis (the son). As much as I am Jordan (the father), I am also Gina (the daughter). This is the charming game of writing – and reading, I hope.
THE STORY IS A WARM LIFE
What is the role of different generations in your new book? The fluidity of roles and genders, friendship, bigotry, school bullying?
These are all themes that run through the book. After all, the narrative is also this warm life – so these themes might not be missing from a novel that depicts today – and indeed the boiling moment. In “Our Children” the two generations face each other: they are in two parallel universes, which sometimes talk and sometimes collide. Will the moment come for these two generations to shake hands?
#Sofia #Nikolaidou #generations #rap.. #soundtrack
