Seven Unsteady Short Stories

Alcibiades Giannopoulos (1896–1981) was born in Athens, the son of Agisilaos Giannopoulos from Epirus and Maria-Eurydice, née Spiliadi. His father was an economist and editor of Dimitrios Koromilas’s newspaper, Efimeris. In literary circles, he was known primarily for his introduction – a manifesto of naturalism – which he wrote for the first Greek translation of Zola’s Nana (by Kampouroglou). After his father’s death, Alcibiades, along with his mother and six siblings, left initially for Marseille and then for Milan. There he completed his education at an Italian school and maintained contact with the Greek language thanks to his sister Ioanna. In 1915, he enrolled in the Department of Physics and Mathematics at the Polytechnic University of Milan and came into contact with the Futurist movement, which influenced his early prose writings in Italian. He corresponded with Marinetti and was a co-founder of the magazine Frecia Futurista.

He returned to Greece in 1917 to serve in the army, and settled there permanently in 1920 following the death of his mother and two brothers (he had returned to Milan in 1919, at which point he interrupted his studies and worked at the Credito Italiano bank. It was then that he began collaborating on the publication of the short-lived magazine Zibaldone). He was hired by the Bank of Greece and requested to work at its Thessaloniki branch. He contributed to the magazine Macedonian Days, where he published the poem ‘Sonnet with a Hidden Purpose’ and his first Greek-language prose work, entitled ‘Heads in a Row’ (1932). His literary output from the Thessaloniki period was received with positive reviews from the critics. In 1938 he was transferred to Piraeus, where he experienced the pain of the death of his sister Ioanna, with whom he had been living. In 1942, he married the painter Georgia Terlidou.

During the German occupation, he took part in the National Resistance alongside his wife and also fought through his writings. In 1953, he resigned from his post at the Bank and subsequently worked in the Research Department of the Deputy Ministry of Press, where he was particularly involved in compiling the Greek Bibliography (1958–1968) in three languages. He was dismissed from this post by the Papadopoulos dictatorship. He was awarded the First State Prize for Short Stories (in 1963 for the collection *The Blind Fly* and in 1974 for *Seven Unbalanced Short Stories*). He was a member of the Society of Greek Writers (from 1948) and its president (from 1976 until his death). He died at the age of eighty-five in Athens.

Alcibiades Giannopoulos’s first official appearance in the field of modern Greek literature took place in 1932 with the first serialised publication of his short story ‘Heads’ in the magazine Macedonian Letters. It should be noted, however, that this short story essentially marks the beginning of the second phase of his literary career, as it was preceded by his Italian-language output, from which he retained many elements. His work belongs to the sphere of modern literature of the 1930s generation and is characterised mainly by anti-realistic writing, plot twists, the distinction between physical and psychological time, dreamlike elements, and existential angst. Notable works include *The Forest of Monkeys* and his only novel, *The Salamander*. He was also active in playwriting, criticism, scholarship, essay writing and literary translation.