In April this year, 24 writers of Greek crime fiction got together in a downtown Athens bistro and formed the Greek Crime Fiction Club, the country's first ever crime writers' organisation. Organised by writers (and journalists) Chrysa Spyropoulou and Yannis Ragos, the group now has its own blog (see below), and will meet monthly for both readings and to organise various events in the Greek capital.
The writers age from 30 to 82, says Chrysa, and represent most schools of crime fiction: the whodunit, psychological suspense, the socio-political novel, and the hard-boiled. The oldest member of the group is veteran Athina Kakouri, Greece's first notable post-war female crime writer. Her writing career began in the early 60s with a series of short mystery stories, and whose work has since also embraced both adventure and historical novels. 72 year-old Petros Markaris, the most eminent member of the socio-political school of crime writing, is not a member of the group, but he will nevertheless participate in many events.
Other members do include Filippos Filippou and the sometime hard-boiled writer Andreas Apostolides, both similarly notable for their socio-political tendencies; G.Nikas has a US-style private detective, Neocles Galanopoloulos writes whodunits. Two of the four books by ex-TV writer Yannis Ragos concern crime – one a crime novel, one true crime. Chrysa herself (five novels) writes detective stories alongside others more psychologically-orientated. She is also a translator – of Highsmith's Carol amongst others – and she has edited Eco Crimes, an anthology of short stories, as well as a special crime fiction issue of the Greek literary magazine Dekata. But why form such a group at this moment – and against a background of a country reeling under a swathe of unpopular austerity measures? In fact the renaissance has been under way for some time. A key date may be 1995 when Petros Markaris, then better known as a playwright and screenwriter for both TV and film, most notably for the prize-winning Greek director Theo Angelopoulos, published The Late Night News (Deadline in Athens in the USA), his first novel featuring Chief Inspector Costas Haritos. That same year Andreas Apostolides published The Waste Game, his first crime novel. Novels from Filippos Filippou and G. Nikas followed in 1998, along with The Fog from the Lake, the first novel by my correspondent Chrysa Spyropoulou.
Of course post-war Greece has been no stranger to political turbulence. Nor has it has been able to avoid the adverse effects of the new global order, among them the the greater mobility of population, bringing in its wake rising violence in the cities and an increasing variety of international crime. Thus since the mid-90s, it has been a rare year when a clutch of native-born crime novels has not appeared. A new Markaris novel will now reach the Greek best-seller list, the interest of the Greek reader sparked by Markaris's success abroad.
But on the whole the Greek reader, Chrysa reports, is still reluctant to pick up a crime title, preferring "romance or history books". Hence the programme of readings etc. to raise the profile of crime fiction amongst the reading public. Hence also the articles (often by Chrysa herself) published recently in the left-leaning Eleftherotypia, one of the most widely-circulated newspapers in Greece. It's a long-term strategy, of course, but Chrysa can already point to one positive result. The Secret of the Lake, her most recent book (a mystery for young people), has just been reprinted, the first of her five novels to achieve this status.
May there be many more such signs. And we look forward to the time when Greece takes its place amongst the widely translated crime fiction nations of Europe.
FURTHER READING
• The 'blog' of the Greek crime writers Club (sorry, Greek-reading crime fans only) is here:
www.crimefictionclubgr.wordpress.com
• Petros Markaris has four Costas Haritos books published in the UK
– The Late Night News (Harvill 2004)
– Zone Defence (Harvill 2006)
– Che Committed Suicide (EuroCrime 2009) and
– Basic Shareholder, just published by EuroCrime (August 2010)
PM's Wikipedia profile here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petros_Markaris
NB Access the interview (in English) by Achim Engelberg via the 'Related Links' listed on the Wikipedia profile. There is also a more extensive article on Markaris (again by Engelberg) in the South-East Europe Review, Issue 3/2006
• Greek crime fiction awaits its historian. Meanwhile check out Highly Confidential, an article (in English) by Thanasis Mylonas from Athens Voice, 3 April 2008. In putting three basic questions to seven Greek crime writers, the replies shed much interesting light on
post-war Greek crime writing. Find it here, at the website of Club member Dorina Papaliou:
http://www.dorinapapaliou.com/en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=35&Itemid=48
• Readers of Greek may like to check out Dekata magazine here: www.dekata.gr/
Chrysa Spyropoulou's special crime fiction issue (No. 12, Winter 2008) contains fiction by locals Titina Danelli, Yannis Efstathiadis, Yannis Ragos alongside stories by Gunnar Staalesen, Esmahan Aykol, Ian Rankin and others. The issue also includes essays on the Mediterranean crime novel (by Petros Markaris), on crime fiction in Turkey, China and elsewhere, as well as features on writing methods and "beloved" books.
• Note for publishers:..
Greek publisher Kastaniotis has to date published three anthologies of Greek crime writing. The latest was Greek Crimes 3, published in 2009 and features stories by Andreas Apostolides, Titina Danelli, Athina Kakouri, Petros Markaris, Petros Martinides, Tefkros Michaelides and Filippos Filippou (all members of the Club) along with six other writers. A description of the book (in English) can be found here:
www.kastaniotis.com/pdf/Foreign_rights_
catalogue.pdf - Greece
