A look into the “dark” past and mental trauma left by the Cold War. Big changes in people’s lives, uprooted and trying to find their footing elsewhere, dates and love in the middle of the war. In Children of the Great Silence, Maira Papathanasopoulou presents the fascinating story of a one-armed child born in a harsh Greek village on the day of the German invasion in 1941.

Together with hundreds of other children, he will settle in Germany and will study at the Free Greece primary school in Dresden. His life will be difficult, but later it will take a different turn when the hero meets love in the face of a Jewish woman. The author (and translator), who in 1998 had a great success with Judas Kissed Beautifully, talks about the new novel The Story and the preparations for writing such an undertaking.

– In the past, especially in the villages, dreams to some extent indicated the actions of people. In fact, in Mani, where I come from on my mother’s side, we say that in order for a dream to make sense, it must be short, like the apocalypse. Big dreams are attributed to gravity and ignored. So, in my own story, the dreams that Gerakina has from a young age are something of a prediction of her future. By clinging to the memory of this prediction, she makes crucial decisions for her life and the life of her child, Stavros. Her dreams, whose constant repetition lends a metaphysical flavor, are also the way she communicates with Stavros after her death. And he sees the same dream as Gerakina. This is a constant conversation of a child with a dead mother, his desire to get advice from her about his life path. In short, dreams and the unconscious that dictates them are the rails on which the train of my story moves.

“Greek prose did not devote time and space to people with disabilities, as real society did not for a long time.”

– In my opinion, Greek prose did not devote time and space to people with disabilities, just as real society has not done them for a long time. To place a charismatic disabled person at the center of the novel is, in my opinion, a minimum of justice.

I use the written word because it is my means to, among other things, restore the image of people with disabilities, which in a limited reading referring to them, mainly as a “comparison”, seems almost repulsive. In the minds of an earlier society, full of stereotypes about anything that deviated from “normal”, disabled people were cunning beggars who presented their disability, often artificially, in order to arouse the pity of others. Ridicule was synonymous with disability. I remember watching “Karagiozis” as a child, the disabled were constantly having fun. Writers, who at all times expressed the spirit of the times, contributed at that time to the formation of a bad image of the disabled.

As an American researcher whose name eluded me put it, literature has always been a “bastion of misinformation” about the true image of the disabled. You ask me if attitudes towards people with disabilities have changed. I will answer again in literature. Some steps are being taken in the right direction.

This is a laborious process, during which age-old taboos are violated. A difficult mission that requires courage and patience on the part of the writer, designed to dissuade the public from the established idea that art is an expression of the beautiful and ideal. Disability is an endless source of inspiration for beautiful art. Let’s finally accept it.

Gerakina, little Stavros and the cold calculations of third parties

“My own disability due to degenerative disease is different from my character’s disability. He is one-armed by origin in the harsh Greek province of Emfilio. You can imagine what kind of attitude those around him prepared for him. In the eyes of the people, this reflected the social representation of his disability. I had the “luxury” to gradually mature through this painful process and the environment accepted it naturally, they joined my needs without feeling uncomfortable. On the contrary, in fact. People congratulate me on my attitude. Do you know what unites me with the hero of my book? Humor as the affirmation of life. Despite the bitter tone of our epilogues, we are both optimists. So is Tyrion Lannister, the dwarf from Game of Thrones for anyone who cares.

– History and specifically the Cold War plays an important role in the life path of the heroes. There is generally no mention of any trauma inflicted by the Cold War. How much do you think this traumatized the psyche of young children who found themselves on the “other side”?

“Imagine you are a five-year-old child who only knows his own name. Suddenly, without understanding the reason, he breaks away from his village and love for his people and finds himself among thousands of other children in some unknown place with strangers who cannot offer him the comfort of a mother’s embrace. Others choose and dictate their memories, the notion of free will collapses under the weight of the cold calculations of others. In my opinion, all these children experienced separation as death, and I do not necessarily mean biological. The loss traumatized them and haunted them to the end.

– Win or lose Stavros is a decision expressed in just five words. This is the last sentence of the book. If you read this, you will understand what I mean. However, I can assure you that in this story the reader himself gives an ending that satisfies him.

“Because we often choose the executioner that suits us,” says one of the heroines of the play. Is it a psychoanalytic perspective that concerns women or everyone?

– What is not discussed concerns everyone. Show me someone who claims he wasn’t chasing the “wrong” person, and I’ll show you a liar.

– In conditions when a woman is the “property” of her husband and domestic violence reigns, what do we understand about the psyche of young Gerakina, who is trying to raise a disabled child alone?

“Gerakina’s personal identity is in conflict with the moral demands placed on her by others. She has an innate ability to define her life even in the inhospitable environment of the village where she lives. The fact that she is raising a disabled child alone has consequences for her psyche. What she once was, a rebellious spirit who did whatever she wanted, is no longer the case. Gerakina after the birth of a disabled child is determined by her relationship with him. Her decisions cease to be spontaneous and become the product of a painful process. Her instinct is determined by the use of sleep. She, who never agreed with the suggestions of others, is called upon to discipline her very being, which forces her to make a terrible decision for her child’s future.

– This is the second part of an informal trilogy about the history of East Germany, but always in connection with the history of Greece. The first part was published in 2017 under the title “Missionary Position” and covers the period shortly before and shortly after the fall of the East Berlin Wall. Although not an autobiographical book, it contains the most pieces of my soul. “Children of the Great Silence” refers to the creation of East Germany and goes back to 1965 and the height of the Cold War. The third part – I am healthy enough to write it – will be placed between 1970 and 1975 and will deal with the bad relations that the East German socialist regime has established with the junta in Greece. It will be Judas Who Kissed Beautifully, for all those who know my first book in 1998, but with a different perspective on the triangle of husband, wife and mistress, and certainly in a different political, social and historical context. . To answer your question, I will say that the study of the trilogy began in 2013, and ten years have passed. The problems I face are mostly related to the research itself: in a chaotic universe of contradictory and overlapping information, my view must be intuitive and minimally emotional in order to minimize the chances of slipping into bias.

– I am completely satisfied with the result, I am proud that this responsible project is finally completed, and although I have a rich imagination as a writer, I cannot accurately express what is going on in my head. Maybe something like a colorful deafening fireworks, accompanied by exclamations of admiration. Or I may be on the verge of a stroke and I’m just describing the symptoms to you.