Kronaka
With this eponymous work, Kyriakos Margaritis attempts a fictional reconstruction of the chronicle as a mode of narration in the 21st century.
All the stories I have loved were rivers, but I would like you to see the one I have decided to tell as a sea: who will ever exhaust it? Certainly not me. Yet I have a longing to reach it and enter the inexhaustible. I am referring to the mystery of the Word, and I go to celebrate it in the courtyard of childhood. There I lay out my castles, with ashes from Auschwitz, the unblemished tears of Turin, soil from the Green Line, verses from Siberia, Athonite relics and a few strolls through the arcades of Athens. If I am not mistaken, the foam will be called Kronaka, that is to say, Chronicle. The rest, perhaps eternity, I hope will be my depths.
The publication is made possible by the kind sponsorship of the Kimonos Arts Centre.
- Pages: 480
- ISBN: 978-960-572-178-7
- Publication: 2017
- Dimensions: 13,3 x 20,5 εκ.
- Categories: Literature, Books, Greek Literature
"...Inspired by a very specific and recognisable metaphysics, Kyriakos Margaritis writes a prose poem, to which he skilfully imbues a plot and a philosophical character, intense patriotic sentiment and a prevailing mood of recognition of his cultural origins."
– Nikos Xenios, Bookpress.gr"...With his idiosyncratic style, his own words, his own personal form, Kyriakos Margaritis manages to strike a very different note from the majority of his contemporary fellow writers. [...] Kyriakos Margaritis, with his new book *Kronaka*, persistently demands and rightfully earns his place in the void that surrounds him."
– Vivian Avraamidou-Ploumpi, Amagi"...As a student and practitioner of theology, I smile with satisfaction at the book by my friend Kyriakos Margaritis, and as a writer I am inspired by it, as I am sure others will be too. I thus take up the baton from Arsenios Theseus of Art."
– Panagiotis Thomas, Litart.gr"...the author seems to know exactly what he is talking about, drawing on a vast store of well-assimilated knowledge of narrative. Intertextual references are scattered throughout, excerpts from all genres of discourse are featured at the start of each subchapter and drive the chronicle forward, whilst there are gradual ‘revelations’ of the material that the existential detective is called upon to decipher on the reader’s behalf. Margaritis is not an easy writer. And his Chronicle, ‘Kronaka’, is a novel, a narrative, the stories we tell, that we have heard, that were told to us, that we learnt and, ultimately, that we lived."
– Vasiliki Christi, diavasame.gr"...the journey the author has in store for us is vast and fulfilling, not superficial. Yet it is interwoven with the character of a people, with the passions of Cyprus, with its history, folklore and mythology. Margaritis magically ‘weaves’ all these elements together, delving into the past and recognising how beautiful it is to honour one’s roots."
– Asimina Xirogianni, Fractalart.gr"...We read Kyriakos Margaritis’s _Kronaka_ with great interest; he carries his narrative from place to place, bombarding us with information, images, thoughts and memories, composing a book about history, literature, Cyprus, Athens, himself, the whole world. It is not exactly a novel; it is what the title says, a chronicle."
– Athos Dimoulas, K Magazine"...a hybrid of postmodern cut, something between literature and chronicle, between confession and national myth-history. It explores Cypriot identity through successive palimpsests of individual and collective reality, texts and intertexts, historical and mythological references. In other words, it weaves a tapestry woven with the threads of myth, history and individual life."
– George N. Perantonakis, Bookpress.gr"...Kyriakos Margaritis’s _Kronaka_ and _Ennea_, like Sofronis Sofroniou’s _Protoplastoi_, are monumental works that create vast palimpsests—the former primarily of an intertextual nature, and the second of a historical nature, so as to integrate the island’s contemporary post-war history into the broader panorama of Cyprus’s past."
– George N. Perantonakis, Bookpress.grKyriakos Margaritis
Kyriakos Margaritis was born in Cyprus in 1982. In 1996, he published the serialised novel *Giorkis the Karpasite* in a local newspaper, which was released in book form in 1998. In 2014, he wrote the novel Kronaka (Ikaros 2017), which marks the end of his first writing period. Since then, he has been working on a multi-volume work under the general title New Kronaka, comprising eleven trilogies. The publication of the first of these, which also contains the novels Ennea (Ikaros 2021) and Samson (Ikaros 2023), concludes with Event 74. At the same time, he is developing a series of narrative essays, published by Armos, the most recent of which is Ano Vythos (2023), concerning the work of director Filippos Koutsaftis. More about the author: k-margaritis.com
