News

The popular French author, Jean Echenoz, gave an exclusive interview to Bookpress and Dionysis Marinos, on the occasion of the publication of his latest book Special Envoy (translated by Achilleas Kyriakidis). You can read it below:Mr Echenoz, it has already been 38 years since you first came to the fore. Have you changed since then? Are you now a different writer? Although nothing is constant, not much has changed in terms of my writing. However, a great deal has changed in my life. Writing is now not just a part of it, but an essential part, as it has become my profession.How do you write? In what way, or, if you like, with what approach? I seek to explore uncharted areas of writing. I’ve noticed that when I start writing a book, I always want to work against what I’ve written in the past.Could you do something else? Not write again, let’s say? I’m afraid not. I can’t do that. What appeals to you most, the subject matter or the style? You are one of the finest stylists, but plot is not absent from your books.I’m equally interested in both, and that’s because both the subject I want to write about and the way I’m going to write it are interdependent. You know, cinema taught me a lot about how to tell my stories. In the 70s and 80s I watched a great many films. How did the idea for your latest book come to you? North Korea, Kim Jong-un: it’s not easy for anyone to see such subjects as material for fiction.To tell you the truth, I don’t remember very well how the idea came to me. I think that initially I wanted to write a short crime story involving a kidnapping, with the perpetrators demanding a ransom to release the victim. It would have been a story set in Paris, but also in the French countryside. On the other hand, however, I also wanted to write a story in which various spies would play a leading role. So, in the end, I chose to set the story in a ‘dramatic’ region such as North Korea. The novel constantly plays with the reader. You give them the floor. Am I wrong? I wouldn’t say I give them the floor. No, that is not my intention. And I say this because I regard the reader as a receiver. They are an imaginary witness to what they are reading. On the other hand, they are also an inventor of every book. What is certain is that you do not want a passive reader. Your books, by their very nature, demand active reading. I firmly believe that the reader is never passive. On the contrary, they are an actor, a hero of the novel. Just like the heroes found within the text. And if they grow tired of the book they are reading, they are free to put it down, and then they become a catalytic actor. In *The Special Envoy*, you use all genres in a highly successful blend. Politics is intertwined with satire and espionage. I use whatever I need to develop my story. I usually say that a novel doesn’t start with one idea, but with two. That is, with two facts that may be unrelated to each other, but which can somehow come together. This is something that captivates me and compels me to discover it. Are you interested in what’s happening in the world? Do you read newspapers? I read newspapers every day and I’d say there are times when I find good ideas in them. There are, of course, other times when I can’t see anything that grabs me and sparks an idea. Would you write a book featuring Emmanuel Macron or Donald Trump as the main character? I don’t think I would do that at the moment. No, I wouldn’t want to write a book with those two as the protagonists. Do you consider yourself a ‘political’ writer? Honestly, I’m not sure. There are times when I say, yes, I am a political writer, and at others I clearly do not operate on a political level. Therefore, I cannot answer that question with certainty. Are you writing anything at the moment? I’m afraid I cannot answer that with certainty either.Do your awards mean anything to you? You’ve won quite a few. Receiving an award always stirs up strong emotions in me. It means that your work has had an impact on readers. Every time I receive an award, I’m as surprised as the first time, and that’s because every book is a new endeavour. Nothing can be taken for granted.

The popular American author, George Saunders, immediately after his book ‘Forgetfulness and Lincoln’ was awarded the 2017 Booker Prize, gave an exclusive interview to LIFO and Dionysis Marinos. You can read it below:  Mr Saunders, are you the same person you were before the Booker? Has the prize changed you in any way?I hope I am the same. My self-admiration is already beginning to wane in a quiet way. What is the real prize for a writer? To develop confidence in his vision. In this way, as you move forward, you can strive with greater intensity to create beautiful things. Is it acceptance, admiration or the struggle with words that drives you to embark on the process of writing a book? Honestly, all of the above. But the moment I’m writing, the moment I’m in the midst of developing a book, those things come last. The most important thing is the feeling that you’re creating a coherent world that emerges from chaos. And it is that feeling that something like this came ‘from’ you and ‘because of’ you. In reality, my self disappears momentarily or is neutralised by the artistic work: that is Paradise.    We know you as a short-story writer. You have been accepted as one of the ‘artists’ of the genre in contemporary American literature. What made you write a novel? Every story dictates for itself how it should be written. For a long time I had decided to abandon any attempt to write a novel – I might even say I felt proud of that. I had accepted that I was a fan of the short form. However, I discovered that this particular story was so moving that as soon as I started writing, it was as if a mind (and a DNA) distinct from my own emerged from within it.  And now that you’ve completed your first novel, and a successful one at that, will you return to short stories? Yes, I will. That’s where I belong. I love the short form. If another novel comes along in the future, I think it will arrive in the same way this one did – insisting, despite my own objections, that it must expand and become longer.      Do you find it easier to write short stories, or is it actually harder given that you have to be precise in such a limited space? Sorry, but do you feel you have to be precise? No, I don’t need to be precise, I don’t think so. On the other hand, perhaps, yes, you do have to be concise. The difficulty with short stories is that they behave like a joke: in the end, they’ve either worked or they haven’t, and only the reader knows. And part of the pleasure lies in the effectiveness of the delivery to the reader. Therefore, I consider the short story to be a very demanding form. I have to ‘burn’ the less interesting scenes and then discard them in favour of the more intense ones – and that takes time and many discarded pages.  Speaking of your book Oblivion and Lincoln, the American title includes the word ‘Bardo’. A state between death and rebirth into another form of life. Is that what we are, Mr Saunders? Are we constantly in such a state? Yes, I believe so. The word ‘bardo’ can be used in all transitional states – like the one we are in right now, between birth and death. I suppose we can view every single moment of our lives as a ‘bardo’, with our selves dying and being reborn at every moment. The fact that we carry on basically has to do with a mental construct we create – perhaps for Darwinian reasons, or because we might go mad if we truly realised we are only temporary. Yes, mad, or perhaps with a certain insight.  What was the first thought that came to mind when you decided to write the novel? How did it all begin? Many years ago – in the 1990s – I had heard that Lincoln’s beloved son had died whilst he was President of the United States. He was so overcome with grief that he had visited the grave several times to hold his son’s lifeless body in his arms. That idea has stayed with me all these years – it was all so strange, sad, yet beautiful. Mr Saunders, are you a religious writer? What do you think of yourself? I’d like to think I’m a religious person, or at least someone who’s certainly interested in spiritual matters. I mean, if a person is alive, interested and curious, then a certain set of questions arises in their mind. Why are we here? How are we to live, given this mad contradiction: 1) we were made to love one another AND 2) everything we love (especially our precious selves) is entirely temporary. So, if a writer takes these questions on board and incorporates them into their work (or thinks about them every day), are they a religious writer? I would say yes, even if the result—their work—is not ‘religious’ in the traditional and literal sense. Is your book accessible? I mean, what do you think—can it be read by everyone? It certainly won’t appeal to everyone. You can see that if you look at the reviews on Amazon (laughs). My hope is that it isn’t a difficult book for no reason, if you see what I mean. As the difficulty unfolds, it should lead to increasing beauty. So, what I’m trying to say is that the difficulty rewards the reader in the end. I hope the book teaches the reader how to read it, so that by the end, they’re reading in a new and completely mad way. That offers even greater beauty. How strange is it to give a voice to spirits? In your book, the dead speak. It is just as strange as giving a voice to the living. It is difficult. But it brings great joy. I sensed a strong spirit of understanding from you in the book, and I think that is one of the novel’s key ‘strengths’. I hope so. I think that is precisely what literature does so well in a unique way: it allows us to step into another person’s mind and, in doing so, reassures us that we are not so different from one another – we exist within a continuous and, as a result, greater understanding, empathy and comforting action. In theory, we do this by making an effort within the framework of our perception. Let me take you somewhere else. What is your view on Trump and the fear arising from the rise of populism in the US and Europe?  I think it is yet another manifestation of a human tendency that has always existed: in difficult times, it is easy and somewhat enjoyable to demonise the Other. It is harder to do what I described earlier (i.e. to live with empathy and understanding) or what I mentioned in my speech when I received the Booker Prize. The great story of human activity (I like to think and believe) is the gradual spread of love. Even with a few steps backwards, we are gradually getting better at realising that understanding and empathy are extremely Darwinian tools that the human species needs in order to survive. In the meantime, did you live in fear? Do you think the world is heading towards madness? No, not at all. It has always been this way. Our world is no crazier than it has always been. I think it is crazier for some people at certain moments. I believe in the theory of the Conservation of Madness. The root of madness is spiritual – it is our deluded belief in our separate existence in this world or in our permanence, which leads us to behave badly, and, suddenly, when we die or make a big mistake or suffer, then we realise that things are impermanent. I think this madness has followed us ever since we lived in caves. And I think it’s important, even when we find ourselves in the midst of crazy times, to remember and celebrate those aspects of life that are neither crazy, nor frightening, nor bad. The simple pleasures, the small actions that truly make up the fabric of life. It is the sun shining. It is that face passing by, smiling, beautiful and in love. To ignore these things is to give despair and evil an unfair advantage. What is the role of literature, of art in general, in all this? I see you’ve saved the most important question for last. I think the best way to answer this is to immerse oneself in a beautiful work of art and see what effect it has within you – to observe the positive changes in your mind and spirit, and how these changes make the hours that follow better and richer. That is the role of art: this pleasure and this transformation.

The popular American author, George Saunders, spoke to the newspaper To Vima about his new novel, Oblivion and Lincoln (translation: Giorgos-Ikaros Babasakis), which is in the running for the 2017 Man Booker Prize. Interview by Grigoris Bekos. The interview was published on Sunday 1 October and you can read it below:On 22 February 1862, two days after his death from typhoid fever, 11-year-old Willie – son of the iconic US President Abraham Lincoln – was buried in a marble crypt. That very same night, the distraught father – wishing to mourn a little longer beside his lifeless child – visited Georgetown Cemetery alone. George Saunders structures his new book around this historical event; the Greek title is *Lethé and Lincoln* (the original English title is *Lincoln in the Bardo*). The ‘bardo’ refers to Buddhist tradition; it constitutes a transitional stage, an intermediate state between death and rebirth. Well, the American author transforms this into an unpredictable fictional setting, creating a sparkling, polyphonic story featuring the most human ghosts we have ever encountered in the pages of literature. And that is why he is a nominee for the 2017 Booker Prize... You are in fine company on this year’s shortlist, Mr Saunders, alongside Paul Auster, Ali Smith...’It is, of course, a special honour, and I must admit that it had the strange – though somewhat reprehensible – effect of making me like myself a little more, of fuelling my ambition for much grander projects.”You were devoted to the short story. How did your first novel come about? Was it an experiment that simply went well this time? Did the material you had to work with play a part? ‘I have the feeling that, in this case, the material itself demanded that I handle it in this particular way. I must tell you that, for the most part, I had been cleansed of my desire to write a novel; but I loved the core of this story so much that, once I had properly embarked on the process of actually writing it, the story itself demanded to become something more extensive than a short story. An extremely important advantage for me was, as you say, the experimental nature of the project – I tried to get inside the mind of a ‘newcomer’, so to speak, to adopt his perspective, so that I could discover from the outset how a novel is written. I believe, more broadly, that when an artist begins to mature, they must look steadfastly ahead, indeed provoke in themselves a sense of wonder or bewilderment regarding what they do, and reject complacency, the ‘autopilot’.How did you find out about that particular visit by Abraham Lincoln? ‘At some point, back in the 1990s, my wife’s cousin began telling me about this incident – a tiny seed of history – as we were driving past Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington; namely that President Lincoln, broken with grief, kept the body of his dead son in the crypt. The image lodged itself in my mind and stubbornly refused to leave for nearly two decades. I wrote a play that didn’t turn out well; I tried to forget it, but I simply couldn’t. Gradually, I began to realise that the reason I was trying to escape from all this was my fear that I lacked the skills and qualifications to complete such a book, something terribly distressing for me. Giving up on the project seemed to me like a kind of artistic death. And so, in 2012, I started writing it, absolutely convinced of the outcome: I would give up. But that was when – in a strange way – the book really took off!’ The Buddhist concept of ‘bardo’ is essentially what makes the ‘action’ in your novel possible. In what way exactly did it serve you? ‘I used this transitional condition because it helped me – it reminded me, to be precise – that I must constantly imbue the afterlife with a mysterious aura. In that state – or at least based on the limited understanding I actually have of it – what keeps the soul trapped is precisely its inability to comprehend the state it is in. This means that the soul continues to misinterpret what it is (as is always the case) as something else: a permanent, stable, unchanging entity. This differs slightly from the Roman Catholic Purgatory, in the following sense: the bardo (again, I’m talking about my own version in the novel) is a more flexible and changeable state – in contrast to Purgatory, where, once you’re there, you remain until the end of the world, sitting on some uncomfortable bench or something similar, I don’t know...’. What is striking, if nothing else, is the ‘form’ you chose. Beyond the technique, did you perhaps want to link the president’s personal drama with the stories of ordinary Americans at all costs? ‘Look, all the questions you’re asking are truly very important. For me, however, the whole game of writing and fiction lies in finding, as a writer, a voice that is entertaining. Which means a voice that is literarily accomplished, rich, and at the same time accessible and approachable – that is what I devote myself to faithfully every day, and it gives me great pleasure. Otherwise, everything becomes so rigid, so harsh and, moreover, so restrictive.”Why not, for example, a monologue by Lincoln? ‘When I thought of writing the novel from Lincoln’s own perspective, I simply became depressed, and that is a thoroughly bad place from which to start. It seemed to me that it would be incredibly painful to extract anything authentic or entertaining from his own voice – it would be far too contrived, somewhat deterministic, if you like. An old student of mine predicted, quite out of the blue, that if I ever wrote a novel, it would be a series of monologues – and at that moment something clicked in my head! —the prospect of a tangible possibility, a playful mood, opened up within me.” You write about death in a way that doesn’t depress the reader. Do you approach death differently as a writer and as a person? “What I feel about death has been described beautifully by Woody Allen: ‘I’m not afraid of death – I simply don’t want to be there when it happens’. Otherwise, I believe this: art is something that helps us move towards this inevitable destination for us all; it helps us – if you like – to become familiar with the prospect of death, to redefine it in such a way that, perhaps, it does not seem so alien and terrifying to us – I must admit, of course, that for me this has not worked at all so far; indeed, it may even be making things worse, yet I remain optimistic...’.So? “I think we fear death because we have an innate tendency to invest in ourselves to an excessive degree, as if we were going to remain in this world forever, as if we were the centre of the universe. When we write, and imagine the lives of others, this may result – I say may – in our individualism being somewhat diminished. The same may be true of prayer or meditation. All of this can teach us (and constantly remind us) how things really are: we humans are lovable beings, but finite ones. And all this energy we expend to discover who we truly are is nothing more than a Darwinian trick – it makes us want to stay here longer and longer, by any means and at any cost, which is generally good for all species of fauna and flora, but then again, in the end someone has to foot the bill.You mentioned a bill... Does literature serve a purpose, more specifically, Mr Saunders? ‘I think literature performs a very important but rather humble task: it soothes the reader as an individual. It probably has a more effective impact on the sort of person who doesn’t really need this ‘softening’ all that much; even so, however, who among us doesn’t need to refresh our humanity and compassion towards others every now and then? Speaking as a writer now, for me it is preferable – and better – to focus on and address an imaginary reader, an intelligent, thoughtful person with good intentions: if you manage to inspire such a person, then you have achieved something as a writer. How meaningful can this inspiration be? Can it change them? “Even if your influence, as a writer, is only going to last a few hours for the reader, the fact that someone feels more present and more human in their daily life is, for me, a priceless gift. Something that has certainly happened to me, too, with many of my favourite books. Beyond all that, however: who knows? If we look back at history, we will see that great literature has always existed, but it has always been alongside violence and destruction. What can I say? Good literature is perhaps simply like good sex, or a delicious meal, or effective exercise. Literature is the pressure valve on the lid of the pot in which the evil nature of human beings boils...’ I heard you talking somewhere about ‘radical tenderness’. It sounds wonderful. What exactly is it about? “Ah! I haven’t really thought about the full scope of that concept (laughs). Basically, though, this is what I mean: on only a few occasions in my life — and for a brief period — I have happened to feel overwhelmed with love for certain things or people (following the death of a loved one, for example) and I have experienced just how boundlessly all-powerful this state is: that is, to sense the true place of a thing or a person in the world (a temporary place, not necessarily central, a place of service to others). After that, every decision seemed clear and there was little fear or uncertainty. We usually equate ‘love’ or ‘compassion’ as a way of life with weakness, but we need to consider the examples of Jesus or Buddha, or, for instance, the example of Gandhi, to see how invincible this is: to live in a state of unadulterated love and reduced individualism. Does literature, beyond beauty, also have a duty to cultivate a certain morality? ‘Perhaps. I wouldn’t pin all my hopes on literature in this regard. Literature is undoubtedly a space where you can certainly be free. Sometimes, however, I have found that precisely when I am working within a specific logic imposed by a text, I also clarify my own beliefs more clearly. And as I focus, with each new draft, on a specific character (through the prismatic lens of language), I have the sense that what is happening, reality, let’s say, is somehow slowing down, and at the same time it’s as if I’m watching myself create a kind of second-degree empathy. We practise and do it on paper, for years on end, and perhaps things would go better if we applied it to the world around us, if we pushed ourselves. Perhaps...’.You followed Donald Trump’s election campaign closely and wrote about it in *The New Yorker*. How did that come about? I mean the president himself...’That is precisely what a large proportion of Americans are now asking themselves on a daily basis. I don’t think, however, that any of us has the answer. One factor is certainly the incredible concentration of wealth at the top in the US over the last thirty years: the rich have become vastly richer, whilst the poor have become even poorer. I liken this pivotal development to a community living on a mountain where the oxygen has gradually moved upwards and now exists only at the summit: it is natural for the people living lower down, at the foot of the mountain, to feel anxiety and unease.”How do you relate this image to Donald Trump? ‘I am referring, of course, to one aspect of the whole situation, and that is the appeal Donald Trump holds for the working classes. But even that does not cover the whole picture, given that the new president proved attractive only to white working people. People of colour did not support him. Donald Trump played on certain primal insecurities and exploited them, particularly the misguided tendency we have as a nation to think of our country as a white place. We must also take into account another key factor: the poor quality of the education provided, our national inability to grasp, from his dubious rhetoric, that this man in fact neither understands nor cares – nor has he ever been willing — to learn anything about our political system, world history, etc. So, in other words: I have no idea! Like many others here, I feel disheartened and disappointed, and I’m waiting to see where all this will end up.’ You can find out more about George Saunders and his books published by Ikaros here.

Tobias Wolff, a master of the short story form, gave a very interesting interview to the newspaper *To Vima* and to Grigoris Bekos to mark the publication of the book *The Warrior’s Joy and Other Stories* (translated by Tassos Anastasiou & Yannis Palavos). The American author talks about the art of short story writing, explains why literature is intertwined with problematic situations, refers to the Homeric epics and expresses shame regarding the new US president.The interview was published on Sunday 6 August and you can read it below: In his first email – the reply – he wrote to us: ‘Of course we’ll do the interview! We’ve got a bit of work on our hands these days, of course: my second son is getting married here at our house this Saturday. But I think your questions will be a pleasant break for me.” In his second email – let’s call it an apology – a few days later, he wrote to us: “Please forgive me! Immediately after the wedding, I had to travel with my family to Mexico, with the result that both my time and my concentration vanished.” But it was for the best and well worth the wait. Because this particular author, apart from being an authentic writer, is also a kind man. And he was not only consistent but also friendly in his conversation with ‘To Vima’. The 72-year-old Tobias Wolff is no stranger to the Greek reading public. In 2008, Polis Publications released his semi-autobiographical novel *The Old School* – that unforgettable portrait of the poet Robert Frost, among others! – and a year later the wonderful novella *The Camp Thief*, for which he had won, in 1985, the prestigious Pen/Faulkner Award. However, the publication by Ikaros of his exceptional collection *The Warrior’s Joy and Other Stories* came as a necessary complement. Precisely because Tobias Wolff, now a professor at Stanford University, is considered one of the leading short story writers in the US, a master of the short form, which proves to be larger than life when handled by the right hands. The recent Greek edition is a well-balanced anthology of ten of his short stories, ranging from his first collection, In the Garden of North American Martyrs (1981), to a piece published a few years ago in The New Yorker. Stories such as ‘Hunters in the Snow’, ‘An Episode in the Life of Professor Brook’, ‘The Liar’ and the later ‘A Bullet in the Head’ – what a text indeed; in a single, dense paragraph we see what goes on in a man’s mind when a bullet practically pierces his brain! — are not only technically flawless but also create a narrative depth that even voluminous novels would envy. However, if we consider the case of Tobias Wolff in terms of his representativeness in the domestic literary scene, we find that there are outstanding issues worth addressing, namely his two autobiographical works: This Boy’s Life (1989), in which he describes the eventful coming-of-age of ‘Toby’ —this book was adapted for the cinema by Michael Caton-Jones, starring Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio and Helen Birkin—and *In Pharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War (1994), in which the author gives a harrowing account of his involvement in the Vietnam War, a traumatic experience for the US.  Mr Wolf, as you are something of a reclusive writer, it is worth asking: are you writing anything at the moment? ‘Indeed, I am currently writing a new book, a novel. I’ve been working on it for a few years now and I hope to finish it within the year, by Christmas – but for writers, deadlines (as Lenin once said of promises in general) are like pies, their crusts are made to be broken’. I know you don’t like being classified within the literary movement of ‘dirty realism’. But what do you think they mean, especially by the word ‘dirty’?Honestly, I don’t know. Realism as a literary style – not to say almost by definition – has always dealt with the most difficult, brutal and dark aspects of human nature and experience. Contemporary writers who have been categorised in this way, who have been – who we have been – labelled with this mysterious tag, suggesting we belong to such a movement, did not – and do not – do anything more strikingly ‘dirty’ than our predecessors. What can I say, it seems it’s still used simply because it’s catchy. We can discern personal experiences in your fiction, but also recurring themes in your work. I wonder, however, about the two memoirs, the autobiographical texts: did you write them because you believe they are unique experiences, or because you consider that they more broadly cover an important part of the American experience in the 20th century?The structure, the very form of my experience – the way in which my life took shape and as described in these two autobiographical narratives — always seemed to me to be inherently fictional in itself, that it needed none of the inventions of fiction, that it required neither the reconstruction of reality nor any embellishment. And I did, in fact, think it would be worthwhile to express and record all of this, to describe the events that make up the coming of age of a young American and, subsequently, to follow that same person to the front lines of a war. My other works – and those you allude to – although also based on certain personal experiences of mine, required me, the writer, to approach them more through my imagination. And that, I must tell you, is an instinct one develops when writing.” The United States has a long tradition of the short story, dating back to the 19th century. To what, I wonder, is this largely attributable? To the writers themselves or to the readers? ‘In reality, very few Americans read short stories. Even today, the most popular reads here are those multi-page ‘bricks’—the highly sentimental and extremely poorly written books that also have pretentious, bombastic titles, the so-called ‘blockbuster’ books. Every now and then something good pops up, a literary work of substance stands out, but it’s usually a novel. Short stories – like poetry – appeal only to a minority of readers.” Something that holds true everywhere, I think… “Yes, and it’s a shame because the short story is a very exciting genre and rewards the reader in many ways. The short story is a lofty, noble form. Besides, it is also a highly diverse form; there are so many different kinds of short story — from the Italian Calvino to Raymond Carver, from Ernest Hemingway to Jorge Luis Borges and Alice Munro — that only a fool would impose prerequisites and rules on their writing. In any case, the best one can say about short stories is that they must be interesting, and linger in the reader’s mind for quite some time after they have closed the book. In your short story ‘The Liar’ we read that ‘a solipsist is someone who believes that they create everything around them’. Is a good writer a solipsist? ‘Far from it; a good writer is the opposite of a solipsist, his gaze is unwaveringly fixed on a world that is ceaselessly charming and captivating by its very nature, and the good writer honours through his work both the complexity and the harsh underpinning that exist in the reality of this world. Furthermore, the good writer is the opposite of a liar. He is the one who seeks the truth, the one who understands that we must expand and use our imagination in order to discern and confront the truth, as far as we are allowed to. In the same short story, Dr Murphy says something strange, that ‘perhaps unpleasant things are more interesting’. And the question is: can there be literature without problematic situations?It is very difficult to imagine literature without problematic situations. It is problems that make literature happen, precisely because they force people to make their choices, for better or for worse. In this way, in any case, people reveal themselves or become themselves. Problems are the stories. Just imagine for a moment an ‘Iliad’ in which Agamemnon sails in great comfort and arrives quickly at Troy – at Ilion, in any case – the city walls come tumbling down like a house of cards, a wonderful peace is immediately made with Priam, Hector and Achilles become the best of mates, and Menelaus simply gives Paris a friendly pat on the back and returns with the lovely Helen to their home, where, thereafter, they lived happily ever after. How boring! Where is the moment when, just before the duel with Achilles, Hector’s young son frightens everyone with his father’s helmet? Where is Patroclus, killed by Hector whilst wearing Achilles’ armour? where is Priam, begging for the dishonoured body of his dead son, where is the Trojan Horse, where is the city engulfed in flames? But how much do we love these tragedies in the end – these problems!’ In the short story ‘Sleepless’, Richard reads the ‘Odyssey’ and gets bored. Has that ever happened to you? “No! I really like the ‘Odyssey’, but the ‘Iliad’ is perhaps the literary text I love most of all genres, from all eras, timelessly. Once I drove all the way from Athens to Mycenae, in an incredible heatwave, just to show my daughter—who had also become obsessed with the ‘Iliad’—the famous Lion Gate. She considers the photograph I took of her standing near the Gate to be one of the most precious gifts I have ever given her, and she is very proud of it. I love ancient Greek drama very much; in fact, I taught it at university, particularly Aeschylus’s ‘Oresteia’ trilogy. And to turn to more contemporary figures: Elytis, Cavafy, Kazantzakis, George Seferis and Yannis Ritsos are some of the Greek writers who have more recently found a place on my bookshelf.” At this stage of your life, do you return to certain authors, rereading them? “In the past, I used to return more and more to certain authors – Dickens, Melville, Hemingway, and Katherine Anne Porter, whom I personally consider a leading figure in American literature. However, in recent years I have been reading more history books; I do not return to literary texts, but rather I am looking for a different perspective on the same historical period that interests me; I am trying to see how another historian interprets the same set of events.”  Can technology, the so-called digital age, have a substantial impact on literature, on the way we write and read? ‘I’d rather not answer that; I’ve no idea what we mean by the digital age; I’m not in the know.’ In 2015, you received the National Medal of Arts from then-President Barack Obama. What was it like? “It was a wonderful day for me and my wife, but also for the friends who accompanied us to the ceremony, because we already had great admiration for both President Obama and his wife Michelle. At the end of that day, I remember, we were overwhelmed by a sense of sweetness, a tenderness.” Are your fellow countrymen interested in writers’ opinions? Does the public discourse articulated by writers in the US have any influence? “I hope so! Because literature allows us to step into lives other than our own, to enter other souls. When we manage to imagine ourselves as someone else, we become more cautious about judging and condemning others. Because we see in them a reflection of our own human condition, and this deepens our understanding of humanity as a whole; we see it as a community rather than a war of all against all.” I now think that many of your heroes – ordinary people testing their limits – might have voted for Donald Trump, if they were real. That doesn’t mean they would necessarily all be bad people. But they would have... Why? ‘Donald Trump’s election is a disaster for our country. I’m still trying to come to terms with it and accept it. I really cannot understand what could possibly drive someone to vote for a proven bigot, a man who – by his own admission – mistreats women, someone who mocks the public with his so-called ‘university’, a common thief not only of his employees’ hard-earned labour but also of their personal belongings, a pathological liar, an admirer of the most bloodthirsty tyrants, an ignoramus who believes that climate change is a hoax orchestrated by China, and so much more... But all this was known on election day. I mean, this is Donald Trump. And he is consistent with who he is – I’ll give him that, he is consistently dishonest and repulsive. He has managed to completely disrupt our daily lives in the United States and has made us the laughing stock of the rest of the planet. I feel deeply embarrassed and ashamed about this.”