About Dimitris Lyacos
Dimitris Lyacos (Greek: Δημήτρης Λυάκος; born 19 October 1966) is a Greek writer. He is the author of the composite novel Until the Victim Becomes our Own and the Poena Damni trilogy. Lyacos's work has been critically defined as post-tragic, is characterised by its genre-defying form and the avant-garde combination of themes from literary tradition with elements from ritual, religion, philosophy and anthropology. Until the Victim Becomes Our Own explores the evolution of violence in a sequence of chapters each headed by a letter of the classical Latin alphabet. The prologue evokes the attack and barbaric murder committed by a mother chimpanzee (called M2) and her son against the cub of another mother (called M1), similar to the story of Passion and Pom recounted by primatologist Jane Goodall. The first chapter is an episode reminiscent of Cain's murder of Abel from the book of Genesis. Further episodes depict violence in its socially more advanced, institutionalized forms. The Poena Damni trilogy interchanges prose, drama and poetry in a fractured narrative that reflects some of the principal motifs of the Western Canon. The overall text counts no more than two hundred and fifty pages, with the individual books revised and republished in different editions during a period of twenty years. The three works are arranged around a cluster of concepts including the scapegoat, the quest, the return of the dead, redemption, physical suffering, and mental illness. Lyacos's characters are always at a distance from society as such, fugitives, like the narrator of Z213: Exit, outcasts in a dystopian hinterland like in With the People from the Bridge, 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, as well as Cormac McCarthy and has been acknowledged as an exponent of the postmodern sublime and as one of the notable anti-utopian works of the 21st century. Dimitris Lyacos is also mentioned among of the notable postmodern authors of the 21st century, as well as among Greece's likely candidates for a Nobel Prize in Literature. Lyacos's works are published exclusively in translation. As of 2024, Until the Victim Becomes our Own and Poena Damni have not appeared in the Greek original. Lyacos's work is characterised by its genre-defying form and the avant-garde combination of themes from literary tradition with elements from ritual, religion, philosophy and anthropology.
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