The Few Things I Know about Glafkos Thrassakis

When a writer dies, how do we reconstruct the events of his life? In this book Vassilikos invents a new narrative style, the story is told by a biographer as he researches the life of a dead author, Glafkos Thrassakis. Throughout the work there are snippets from Thrassakis's writings and other writings the biographer chooses, this novel is the product of the fictional biographer. Such as the following from Ronsard: "Greece bore me, France buried me. Normandy will keep me here to rot. O, proud fate that oppresses all men, and makes a Greek die in Constant."(6) The biographer informs us that this investigation can never end, "since such an inquiry ends only with the researcher's death".(9) In a recent newspaper article I learned that a long forgotten interview of Walt Whitman's with a local college newspaper was recently rediscovered by a college student, long after his death we are still re-discovering Whitman articles, hidden in obscure places. The biographer presents his info as he receives it and alters his views as he finds new evidence. He states first that Glafkos was devoured by cannibals(4) but as his research progresses, he finds more of his writings and better evidence, we find that the cannibal story is false and his demise was different(283-284). The novel is refreshing since the narrative style is totally new. "This then was life? To wake and work just to go to sleep again because you had worked?"(326) Words like that, that describe the lives of millions and what it means to work, show the gift of the author in keenly observing the world and putting this world to ink. ?his work is a product of true literature, with characters that are fake but act real, with insights, wit and humour that defy time and stand out in this translation across cultures, from Greek speaking to English speaking. This book does not really conclude since the narrator cannot stop writing, and Vassilikos considers the work a sort of fictional biography of his own life. This book was first published in Greek in three volumes in 1974, 1975 and 1979. An allegedly definitive edition was published in 1989 by Gnosis, only for seven years to have another revised definitive edition published by Livanis, only to have a 60 page insert bound and appended to the book since the author could not help himself. When the English translator meet with Vassilikos he decided to cut the 200 page Roman Notebooks section from the English edition, perhaps it could be translated as a sequel.(vii-viii) Truly this endeavor can only end when someone dies, not the fictional narrator, but Vassilikos himself. May he live, since I feel I do not know nearly enough about Thrassakis. (The numbers in parentheses reference pages in the novel.)

I am very gratified to find another five star review for this marvelous book. A friend lent me a copy of "Z" a number of years ago and I've been wondering if another book by Vassilikos would make it over to the United States. Vassilikos is one of Greece's premier authors, alive and writing. Out of the doric temples folks! Greece has a thriving literary scene that I am thrilled to see moving into the U.S market. "The Few Things I Know..." is a stirring and remarkably funny novel. The translation is lucid and often quite poetic. I too recommend this to anyone who is interested in international fiction.

I loved Vassilikos's novel "Z" and I was eager to read this new work. It was everything I hoped for, and more. Although I know far less than I should about the historical background against which Vassilikos is writing, the book was engaging, witty, and ultimately profoundly moving. There is so much material here, and it is so varied and so rich, that by the time you finish you feel as if you have been a fan of the fictional writer Thrassakis all your life. This book comes highly recommended for anyone interested in top international fiction.