I’ve recently reread Yorgos Theotokas’s Leonis for the first time in years. How odd it is as a novel, and at the same time, how compelling. Both the oddity and the power come from the book’s extreme compression, and from its being in some ways less like a novel than a long narrative poem in prose.

Sadly, it isn’t on the rather short list of modern Greek books that have gained currency in English, though I gather there is a translation. In brief outline, Leonis – the hero – starts as a little Greek boy in Istanbul or Constantinople – or … Continue Reading