Dimitris Lyacos

Dimitris Lyacos
Born (1966-10-19) 19 October 1966 (age 58)
Athens, Greece
OccupationPoet, playwright
NationalityGreek/Italian
PeriodContemporary
GenreCross-genre
Literary movementWorld Literature, postmodern literature
Notable worksZ213: Exit (2009)
Website
lyacos.net

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] as well as Cormac McCarthy[11] and has been acknowledged as an exponent of the postmodern sublime[12] and as one of the notable anti-utopian works of the 21st century.[13][14]

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[15][16][17][18][19][20] and an entrant in Who’s Who, the database of the most prominent individuals across all fields of human activity.[20][15]

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]

  1. ^ Ezzine, Kheira Yasmine; Roubai-chorfi, Mohamed El Amine (8 December 2020). "La littérature algérienne contemporaine à l'ère de l'intermédialité". أفكار وآفاق (in French). 8 (2): 419–434. ISSN 2170-144X.
  2. ^ a b "Cha: An Asian Literary Journal - The Precarious Destitute: A Possible Commentary on the Lives of Unwanted Immigrants". Cha: An Asian Literary Journal.
  3. ^ a b Hartman, Chris (July 2019). "Dimitris Lyacos: Poena Damni: I: Z213: Exit; II: With the People from the Bridge; III: The First Death". Pangyrus. Cambridge, MA. Retrieved 25 December 2022.
  4. ^ Barrett, Andrew (August 2019). "Melting Among Echoes: The Elusive Narrative Voice of Z213: Exit". The Florida Review. Retrieved 25 December 2022.
  5. ^ "Grab the Nearest Buoy: On Dimitris Lyacos' Poena Damni". Asymptote Blog. Retrieved 25 December 2022.
  6. ^ a b "Nota Benes, March 2017". World Literature Today. 15 February 2017.
  7. ^ Roth, Paul B. (Spring 2016). "Preface to Dimitris Lyacos, Special Feature". The Bitter Oleander Journal. 22 (1). Fayetteville, NY.
  8. ^ "The Ofi Press Magazine". The Ofi Press Magazine. Archived from the original on 3 April 2004. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference Schneider was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ "Williams, Mukesh. Representations of Self-Actualizing Women in Haruki Murakami and Leo Tolstoy. Studies in the English Language & Literature No. 77 2015 page 34" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 August 2016.
  11. ^ https://nosubstance.substack.com/p/no-substance-204-dimitris-lyacos
  12. ^ Shaw, Philip (21 April 2017). The Sublime. Routledge. ISBN 9781317508861 – via Google Books.
  13. ^ Widdicombe, Toby; Morris, James M.; Kross, Andrea (21 June 2017). Historical Dictionary of Utopianism. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781538102176 – via Google Books.
  14. ^ Jones, Ralph K (16 September 2019). "Dystopian Literature 21st Century – 2000 -2010". Archived from the original on 26 September 2019. Retrieved 26 September 2019.
  15. ^ a b https://www.thecommononline.org/violence-and-its-other-toti-obrien-interviews-dimitris-lyacos/ [bare URL]
  16. ^ https://litera.hu/irodalom/elso-kozles/dimitris-lyacos-poena-damni.html [bare URL]
  17. ^ "Estante Cult | Dimitris Lyacos, profeta e passadista". 18 July 2023.
  18. ^ "Lyacos nella terra desolata". 21 January 2023.
  19. ^ "Palazzo Reale/ Campania Festival libri: Torna la rassegna internazionale (5 - 8 ottobre). Tra gli ospiti, il greco Lyacos in corsa per il Nobel". 20 September 2023.
  20. ^ a b "(Hybrid) Journeys in Sound and Sight with Dimitris Lyacos and Vanessa Onwuemezi".
  21. ^ https://www.lafionda.org/2024/06/14/lettera-a-mattia-tarantino/ [bare URL]