Dimitris Lyacos | |
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Born | Athens, Greece | 19 October 1966
Occupation | Poet, playwright |
Nationality | Greek/Italian |
Period | Contemporary |
Genre | Cross-genre |
Literary movement | World Literature, postmodern literature |
Notable works | Z213: Exit (2009) |
Website | |
lyacos |
Dimitris Lyacos (Greek: Δημήτρης Λυάκος; born 19 October 1966) is a contemporary Greek writer. He is the author of the Poena Damni trilogy. Lyacos's work is characterised by its genre-defying form[1] and the avant-garde[2] combination of themes from literary tradition with elements from ritual, religion, philosophy and anthropology.[3]
The trilogy interchanges prose, drama and poetry in a fractured narrative that reflects some of the principal motifs of the Western Canon.[4][5][6] Despite its length - the overall text counts no more than two hundred and fifty pages - the work took over a period of thirty years to complete,[6][7][8] with the individual books revised and republished in different editions during this period and arranged around a cluster of concepts including the scapegoat, the quest, the return of the dead, redemption, physical suffering, mental illness. Lyacos's characters are always at a distance from society as such,[2] fugitives, like the narrator of Z213: Exit, outcasts in a dystopian hinterland like the characters in With the People from the Bridge,[9] or marooned, like the protagonist of The First Death whose struggle for survival unfolds on a desert-like island. Poena Damni has been construed as an "allegory of unhappiness" together with works of authors such as Gabriel García Márquez and Thomas Pynchon[3][10] and has been acknowledged as an exponent of the postmodern sublime[11] as well as one of the notable anti-utopian works of the 21st century.[12][13]
Dimitris Lyacos is internationally considered as the best-known contemporary Greek author and the country's most likely candidate for a Nobel Prize in Literature[14][15][16][17][18][19] and an entrant in Who’s Who, the database of the most prominent individuals across all fields of human activity.[19][20]
Lyacos's works are published exclusively in translation. As of 2024, his trilogy as well as its prequel Until the Victim Becomes our Own have not appeared in the Greek original.[21]
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