The critical study of memory (especially collective memory) and trauma as tools of identity formation have in recent years left their mark on how scholars in Modern Greek Studies approach Greece’s past, and especially its more painful aspects. Dimitris Tziovas’ latest monograph contributes to this turn towards memory studies, and indeed utilizes much of the same theoretical material as another recent contribution to the field from Christina Koulouri, but whereas Koulouri’s approach is historical and focuses on the first century of Greek independence, T.’s is literary and concentrates on fiction from the end of the dictatorship of the Colonels (1974) to the present.Footnote ¹ T. thus joins the theoretical approaches developed over recent decades in memory and trauma studies to existing scholarship in contemporary Greek literature, with figures such as Elisavet Kotzia, Dimosthenis Kourtovik, Antonis Liakos, and Dimitris Raftopoulos as his principal interlocutors.Footnote ²

T.’s material is drawn from a truly vast array of contemporary Greek and Cypriot novels; indeed, one of the volume’s most impressive qualities is its author’s encyclopedic knowledge of his subject, which means that his monograph serves as a valuable introduction to contemporary fiction in Greek. Nevertheless, T. also reaches back confidently to previous periods to bring his reader’s attention to the diachronic changes he maps in the modern Greek novel and its approach to the past and national identity (from generality to particularity, with the fiction of individual trauma and minority/minoritized experiences replacing narratives of collective national triumph or suffering favoured in earlier periods). The volume therefore also offers highly perceptive readings of core texts by Alexandros Rizos Rangavis (Ο αυθέντης του Μορέα), Ilias Venezis (Το νούμερο 31328, Γαλήνη, Αιολική γη), Stratis Myrivilis (H ζωή εν τάφω), Kosmas Politis (Eroica, Στου Χατζηφράγκου), and Angelos Terzakis (Η πριγκιπέσσα Ιζαμπώ).

The monograph is comprised of an introduction and eight chapters, which grow less theoretically inclined and more focused on close readings of individual works as the book progresses. The introduction analyses the term ‘historical novel’ to ask what such a work looks like in a contemporary context and what purpose (social, entertainment, educational) it serves in both the world of theory and in the Greek-language fiction market. T. engages closely with theories of meta- and postfiction which have grown largely out of recent anglophone literary scholarship,Footnote ³ arguing that the arrival of the metafictional turn in Greece coincides with the fall of the dictatorship in 1974. With the parameters thus set for the general discussion, T. fixes his attention more squarely on fiction in Greek, although the first two chapters are still heavily theoretical. Chapter One sets up the distinction between the notions of history and memory, defining crucial concepts such as ‘(post)memory’ and ‘presentism’ and outlining their relationship to trauma, historiography, and chronology. Chapter Two then explores the fragmentation of a singular national history into plural national histories in the late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century novel, arguing for a move away from monolithic views of Greece’s past towards a multiplicity of perspectives and identities which can be highlighted within historical fiction.

In Chapters Three to Six, T. offers a series of close readings demonstrating the various theoretical arguments concerning contemporary Greek fiction he makes in the preceding chapters. Chapter Three examines the move T. observes from narratives of national sorrow surrounding concepts such as Ottoman rule or the Asia Minor Catastrophe to works which question the historical innocence or victimhood of the Greek nation; in recent decades, T. argues, the focus has changed to incorporate minority experiences, conversion from Christianity to Islam, multicultural Ottoman cities such as Thessaloniki or Chania, and antisemitism, often with an interest in narrating historical crimes committed by Greeks. Chapter Four is concerned with narratives of trauma, which T. argues have most productively been employed in post-dictatorship Greek fiction in work addressing the Nazi occupation of Greece (including the Holocaust) and the subsequent Civil War. He is particularly interested in changing perceptions of the latter, which he argues (191) only became truly ‘fictionalized’ in the post-dictatorship period, beginning with the works of Aris Alexandrou and Thanasis Valtinos. In Chapter Five, the objectivity of history itself is questioned, as T. describes the process by which Greek fiction – especially that covering the crucial decade of the 1940s – has in the post-dictatorship period largely rejected the supposed authenticity of eyewitness accounts for what he terms an ‘archival poetics’ in which fiction is created through the use of supposedly objective documents with the power to take ‘history to court’ (230). Chapter Six examines novels which collapse the boundaries between past and present, either through the use of parallel past/present narrative arcs, or through focusing on a central figure in the present engaged in research on an aspect of the past; T. asks whether such works can truly be deemed historical novels and considers the popularity of more antiquated terms such as ‘romance’ (rather than ‘novel’) now favoured by an increasing number of authors for such fiction. Chapters Seven and Eight are the narrowest in scope in the volume, since they offer case studies of selected novels where a past setting is used as a metaphor for the present (Chapter Seven) and in which the Greek past is internationalized (Chapter Eight); in both cases, one senses that more could be said on the subjects, although T.’s interpretations are as perceptive and thorough as we have come to expect from such a distinguished reader of modern Greek literature.

Despite my feeling that the final chapters could be fleshed out further through additional examples drawn from other novels, T. has produced a wide-ranging work with a clear argument concerning the relationship between fiction, trauma, and historical memory in post-1974 Greece. His approach is detailed enough to make his book a reference work for the study of contemporary Greek literature, especially through his generous bibliographical references and comprehensive list of novels discussed at the end of the book. Nevertheless, the sheer breadth of his focus means that he has opened up many fruitful avenues for future researchers in the field to pursue.