Novel
Τα τρία καρφιά
Not translated into English
Nikos Nikolaidis · 1948
Synopsis
A narrator reports a story handed down to him by people of the island, the legend of a man said to be marked by Satan, and sets out to untangle its truth. This man, Kassianos, is a poor boy who, by dint of work, becomes a small shopkeeper in town, where he is nicknamed the nail-bearer. The novel follows his life amid a neighbourhood that mocks him, judges him a miser and does not see who he is.
Context
Published in 1948, the novel was printed, like the author's other books, at his own expense; settled in Egypt, he had refused to send his works to Greece under the Metaxas dictatorship. His Greek readers rank him among those who broke with regional genre painting, and his French translator, Alexandre Zotos, compares this novel with Kazantzakis's Christ Recrucified. The book was reissued in Athens, by Kedros, in 1992.
Who it is for
For discovering a Cypriot novel of 1948, available in French since 2015 from the éditions Desmos, in a translation by Alexandre Zotos.
Prizes and reception
The poet Myrtiotissa saw in it the truest and most human book; Caravolas holds that the author entered the Modern Greek canon in his lifetime.
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