A Newly Translated Novel Captures the Tragedy of Greek Communism
A Newly Translated Novel Captures the Tragedy of Greek Communism
Written in 1972, during Greece’s military junta, leftist Marios Chakkas’s recently translated novel The Commune is a mournful testament from a world where the stakes of politics were communism or fascism, democracy or dictatorship.
Someday, they'll write novels about the tragedy of growing up in America in this generation. . .
Or did they already? (Black Mirror)
My abstract of the linked article
The Commune is a 1972 novel by Greek writer Marios Chakkas that was recently translated to English. It captures his experience growing up in working-class Athens amid the Greek government's violent suppression of communism after WWII. Chakkas was imprisoned in the 1950s under anti-communist laws and witnessed the 1967 military coup. The novel depicts the remnants of the communist movement building a commune and the narrator's declining health, representing the left's defeat and melancholy. However, Chakkas refuses to fully abandon hope, seeing how the blood and memories of past resistance in his neighborhood could inspire new opposition to the dictatorship.
The Commune provides a glimpse into the tragedy faced by Greek communists after the civil war and their struggle to maintain hope against overwhelming odds.
Archive.today link to jacobin.com
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