Detective Novel Event
On Wednesday, December 3, 2008, ETHAL organized an event focused on the detective novel.
Venue: ETHAL Technospace, 7:00 p.m.
Speakers: Petros Markaris and Panagiotis Agapitos
Coordinator: Vice-Rector of the Cyprus University of Technology, Mimis Sofocleous
With the support of the Cultural Services of the Ministry of Education and Culture and Kyriakou Bookstores.
The Magic of the Detective Novel
Markaris and Agapitos converse with… detectives!
With Petros Markaris, a well-known international novelist and creator of the character “Inspector Haritos,” as well as a translator of Brecht in Greece and modern Turkish literature, and a screenwriter for films by Theodoros Angelopoulos. He is also the current President of the National Book Centre of Greece.
Alongside him is Panagiotis Agapitos, a Professor of Byzantine Studies at the University of Cyprus and an author of detective novels featuring the protagonist Leo, a Byzantine-era military officer. This event by the Limassol Theater Development Company (ETHAL) continues the presentation of modern Greek writers in Cyprus, held at the Technospace.
The occasion is the detective novel and the meeting in Limassol of two friends of the city: Petros Markaris, born there, and Panagiotis Agapitos, who engages with its history during the Byzantine era.
The event coincides with the premiere of Aziz Nesin’s comedy “Come on Sweetie, Kill Me!” which takes place in the neighborhoods of Istanbul, as well as ETHAL’s 20th anniversary.
The event is organized by the Cultural Services of the Ministry of Culture of Cyprus and Kyriakou Bookstores in Limassol, Paphos, and Nicosia. It is coordinated by the Vice President of the Cyprus University of Technology, Professor Mimis Sofocleous.
About the Speakers:
Petros Markaris, novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and translator, was born in Istanbul in 1937. He studied economics and has worked as a freelance writer since 1976. He collaborated with Theodoros Angelopoulos on the screenplays for the films Days of ’36, Alexander the Great, The Suspended Step of the Stork, Ulysses’ Gaze, and Eternity and a Day. He has also written scripts for the TV series Anatomy of a Crime, which aired for three years on Greek television. He has translated works by Frank Wedekind, Arthur Schnitzler, Bertolt Brecht, Peter Weiss, Franz Xaver Kroetz, and Thomas Bernhard into Greek. His most recent translation is Goethe’s Faust.
Panagiotis Agapitos, Professor of Byzantine Literature at the University of Cyprus, was born in Athens in 1959. He studied Byzantine Studies, Byzantine Art History, and Musicology at the University of Munich (1977-1984) and completed his postgraduate studies at Harvard University with an M.A. in Classical Philology (1984-1986) and a PhD in Byzantine Philology (1986-1990). He has been teaching at the University of Cyprus since 1992 and has published two monographs (Munich 1991, Copenhagen 1992) and a series of articles on Byzantine romantic novels. In 2006, he published a critical edition of the oldest adaptation of the popular romance The Story of Livistros and Rodamne (13th century). In 2008, he published a study on medieval love stories. In his free time, he writes mystery stories set in 9th-century Byzantium, with his protagonist Leo, a high-ranking military officer. His novels The Ebony Lute (2003) and The Bronze Eye (2006) are published by Agra Editions, and he is currently completing the third novel in the series titled The Enamel Medusa. He recently published a short detective story about the illicit trade of Byzantine artworks in the collection Greek Crimes 2 (Kastaniotis Editions, 2008).
