The Fortress of Memory

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Category: Literature

Published on Friday, 13 May 2016 14:41

In the imaginary village of Paliokastro, the "memory citadel" of the book, the first novel of the trilogy of memory of Fakinos takes place. Paliokastro, symbol of the Hellenism that fight in defense of their independence and their cultural identity, is the last corner of the Greek land remained free after the Ottoman conquest.

Its inhabitants, at the cost of enormous sacrifices, show that every man has the duty to follow in order to affirm their ideals. And as always, the fight highlights the brightness and the miseries of man, his extraordinary courage but also the cowardice which irreparably marks his actions. The bunch of men barricaded in the fort of Paliokastro have as their only weapon to fight the faith and the memory, and set an example for all those who do not surrender to the bullying, the abuse of power, and to the stratagems of power. If the enemy of the people of Paliòkastro is the Ottoman imperialism, that of todays people is tiredness, indifference, the threat of new tyrannies that occur with the attractive face of the economic welfare and modernity. The Fakinos novel invites us to be always vigilant and to take care as the most precious memory of who we are, against the risk of oblivion.

Aris Fakinos, considered by some critics to be one of the most important European writers, was born in 1935 in Athens. He studied and taught at the French Cultural Institute of Athens until 1965, when he decided to devote himself to literature and essay writing . In 1967, after the military coup, he emigrated to France, where he obtained political asylum. Until the fall of the military reign he refused to publish in Greece. His works, translated in many countries, are adopted in numerous schools and foreign universities where modern greek is taught.