Ο Dionysis Haritopoulos removes the suspicion of any perjury, while immersed in a magical period of pleasure and social release. What more can one ask of a pure writer and lover of writing in the unique path he is already charting in literature as an art?;
With his fictional autobiography, Love in the post-communist era, depicts the cultural collage of modern Greece in the still unexplored last quarter of the twentieth century, far from political parties and any circuits of politics or life. In just five hundred words he describes the advent of Constantine Karamanlis at the beginning, as he outlines the warlike climate of fear that accompanied the old regime along with the post-Huntsunist deep state. Never, as a child of genuine Change, have I read a fuller and more comprehensive analysis of the night and the era of democratization of Greece, later known as the «Metapolization».
Love in its primitive form embellishes the palette of a social anthropogeography from 1974 to 1990. The author, with acumen, but also with his steady, as well as impartial, eye, always in a third-person narrative, offers us a solid narrative mapping the era that forever marked the country as the most democratic and freest period to date. The third person focuses the lens closer to the protagonist. All the action is cinematic, similar to the first night of the post-communist era. Political catharsis (?), female emancipation, the relative ease of work rehabilitation for both sexes, advertising as a new professional field, along with the increase in overconsumption, world cinema, intense nightlife and holidays are the themes of the main performance canvas for Dionysis Haritopoulos.
The question that is raised here inextricably with regard to the end of the post-apolitical era - perhaps even extending to 1993 by me - obviously converges on the fact that then we do indeed have the end of another era. Life changes again when the same renegades indiscriminately shoot a racehorse, a legacy from the old days, a deep cut into the new democracy of post-apolitical Greece. In four years the country has briefly experienced the last three decades as tragedy first and then as farce. Work went from a right to a matter of employment, sometimes even begging, η pop culture of advertising was trapped on the small private screen as spot, the cinema remained in place, while the night became an imported artist from eastern socialist Europe who also went on the road. We go on holiday, but with holiday loans now, and the bank has realised that it is not a friend when it forecloses on us (previously we thought it was stupid as long as it gave us money).
The latest book of Dionysis Haritopoulos, not a literary postscript as I hope, but a gurgling flowing history, The Love in the post-communist era, this is a short novel by its author, published by Topos (2019), which is for every thinking Greek who wants to remember the past greatness, but also for anyone who did not live through the era of post-independence and wants to learn about it properly. A novel-sized story for every citizen with social perceptions and insider representations of our moral life.
Georgia Tsatsani
Author of the article:
Georgia Tsatsani is a philologist and comparative literature scholar.
