The Flaw

Details

Category: Literature

Published on Friday, 05 August 2016 15:11

Antonis Samarakis was a contemporary Greek writer of the postwar generation. His work is characterized by its humanism, its commitment against the danger of totalitarianism and reflection on the alienation of human beings in the modern world.

He was an ambassador for Unicef for his country in 1989.
Samarakis studied law at the University of Athens and he worked in the Ministry of Labour.
He began his literary activity by publishing some poems in newspapers and literary magazines in the thirties, but soon dropped out to devote himself to prose.
During the occupation of Greece he participated in the resistance and in 1944 he was arrested by the Germans and sentenced to a death penalty which was finally delivered.
He left his job in the ministry to devote himself entirely to writing. He kept his political activity during the Dictatorship of the Colonels and after the restoration of democracy he published many social and political writings.
He died of a heart attack at his home in 2003.

Today I will speak about his book “To Lathos”, “the Flaw”.

In this novel the relationship between a political prisoner in a police state and the police who interrogate him is described.
As usual in the author's work, free will and the ability of individuals to react against the established game have an important role in the development of the plot.
The most particular aspect of the book are the similarity of the events and the atmosphere of the novel with the reality of the colonels dictatorship imposed shortly after the publication of the book. This has contributed to its success in Greece.