Kostas Hatziantoniou
WINNER
WINNER
Biography
Kostas Hatziantoniou was born in 1965 in Rhodes, where he also grew up. He studied political sciences and public administration at the Law School (University of Athens), and made his first appearance in literature in 1990, as a publisher of the literary magazine Remvie. Since then, he has collaborated with all of Greece’s notable literary magazines, as well as with encyclopaedic publications, writing literature, critical essays and historical articles.
He has received awards from the Greek PEN Club, the Company of Christian Letters, and the P. Foteas prize for essays. In 2009, he was selected as a committee member of the National Literature Awards. His narrative works during the last decade include the The Book of Black Bile (Parousia Publications, 2001) and the novel Agrigento (Ideogramma Publications, 2009).
Nominated book : Agrigento
Summary
Agrigento looks at what happens when a group of people, for whom ordinary life is not enough, meet in modern–day Agrigento, a town in southern Sicily with a long history, as well as one which reflects modern Sicilian culture.
These people include an odd elderly doctor, Pausanias Anchite (who immerses himself in the story of ancient Akragas, guided by the great philosopher of the city, Empedocles); his daughter Isabella, a painter who seeks redemption, not through art, but in an unforeseeable personal fate; an outlaw called Gaetano, who hides there while pondering over his life, shooting down popular myths concerning organized crime; a Greek man called Linos, who chooses to flee and to return to his first love in order to save himself from boredom and from his homeland’s collapse; and an unfrocked Catholic priest, who together with his brother, remembers people and events of another, unknown Sicily.
The story initially follows the parallel lives of the characters and gradually escalates on multiple levels. Agrigento is a book that is a hymn to Sicily beyond stereotypes and preconceptions, but also a hymn to the real life we miss out on, when we surrender ourselves to obsessions. It is a classical, realistic novel, with a solid architecture and a magical atmosphere, which attracts and captures the reader in search of literature of a high standard. A book that entertains, cultivates, gets one thinking and defends the hope for a true life via the vivid landscape of European intellect.
Excerpts
Related publications
EUPL Retrospective Box
Various authors
EUPL Anthology 2011
Various authors