Panos Niavis, recently released his first novel «Ten inches of black snow» by Armos Publications, after two poetry collections and the recent translation into Greek of 30 poems by the great Argentine poet Alfonsina Storni.
The heroine of the book, Dasia, abandoned in the nursing home of a small mountain town in the twilight of her life, apologizes to God and to her granddaughter (the only person who cares for her) for the sins, iniquities and crimes of her life.
The story takes place from 1940 to the edge of the 21st century. Locally the story has no place or origin, it could be anywhere in the harsh Greek province of central Greece in the post-civil war years. The author states unequivocally that his novel has no place, considering Dassia the literary sister of Tsunga, the heroine of Mario Vargas Liosa.
The book is written for all those people who wasted their lives on causes that were not their own.
And as the heroine «says» on the back cover of the book:
«My name is Forest! I was born in the stone folds of history in leap years. I groan for truth with the little light of my aging eyes. The images indistinct, old and faded. An innocent dress of my youth flutters mentally in the air. Rain and doubt evaporate like old destinies...»
«I apologize will say that I want to rest definitively in the spacious shackle of your apology...»
«Ten inches of black snow» was written to preserve the memories of an era and to justify human behaviour that history has wronged.
Bio:
Panos Niavis was born in 1956 «in the bloodstained folds of history» a few years after the end of the civil war. His birthplace, Marathos in Agrafa, Evritania, was drenched in blood, pain, hatred and sorrows, unholy from the violence of an unnecessary conflict.
The conversations of the victors and the vanquished, but above all «the silent voices» of the killed, which were faintly echoing in the blurred mirrors of the adult narratives, gave a fictional air to their unfortunate lives and preserved them as nostalgic memories and sometimes confessions of their fate.
In those years it was early night and the nights were long like blind anticipation looking into the darkness for their lost right, which hopefully the historians of the future will find one day...
Since then he remains an internal exile, vulnerable and insecure, living in Athens. He writes a lot, but little of it will see the light of day. He writes mostly poetry and has published two collections of poetry. «The Black Blackbird in the Snow», Samizdat Publications, and «The Triangulation of Passions», Melanie Publications. Recently, thirty poems by the great Argentinean poet Alfonsina Storni have been published, by Parencia Publications, under the title: «No me olviden» with their rendition in Greek by the author.
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