M. Karagatsis was the pen name of the important modern Greek

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

 novelist, journalist, critic and playwright Dimitris Rodopoulos. He was born in Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

, lived in Larissa

Larissa

Larissa is the capital and biggest city of the Thessaly region of Greece and capital of the Larissa regional unit. It is a principal agricultural centre and a national transportation hub, linked by road and rail with the port of Volos, the city of Thessaloniki and Athens...

 and studied law in France. The pen name M. Karagatsis is the name the novelist is known with. The letter "M." comes from Mitya, which is the Russian diminutive of Dimitris (his real name). The word "Karagatsis" comes from the tree "Karagatsi

Elm

Elms are deciduous and semi-deciduous trees comprising the genus Ulmus in the plant family Ulmaceae. The dozens of species are found in temperate and tropical-montane regions of North America and Eurasia, ranging southward into Indonesia. Elms are components of many kinds of natural forests...

" under the shadow of which he used to write as a young writer.

Evaluation

Karagatsis has been characterized as primarily a prose writer of the illusory reality of persons and situations. His writing is bold, sensual, with great imagination and a unique narrative style, and is often studied by Greek students. His first three novels (Colonel Liapkin, Chimaera and Junkermann) compose a trilogy named Acclimazation under Apollo, about foreigners who live and work in Greece. Karagatsis sets these books in modern, cosmopolitan Greece, in contrast with the stereotype that Greek life is conservative and countrified.!

Books

Karagatsis is one of the few modern Greek writers to be translated, (mainly in German, but also in English, Italian, French) and his most important works are:

• Miss Nitsa ( 1929, short novel awarded by literature magazine Nea Estia)
• Colonel Liapkin (1933) (Ο Συνταγματάρχης Λιάπκιν)
• Junkermann (1939) (Γιούγκερμαν)
• The last days of Junkermann (1940) (Τα στερνά του Γιούγκερμαν)
• Lost island (1941) (Χαμένο Νησί)
• The ruler of Kastropyrgos (1944) (Ο Κοτζάμπασης του Καστρόπυργου)
• Great Sleep (1946) (Ο Μεγάλος Ύπνος)
• Bar Eldorado (Stage play, 1946)
• Blood lost and gained (1947) (Αίμα χαμένο και κερδισμένο)
• Carmen (Stage play, 1948)
• History of Greeks (nonfiction, 1952) (Η ιστορία των Ελλήνων)
• At God's Hands (1954)
• Death and Thodoros (1956) (Ο Θάνατος κι ο Θόδωρος)
• Yellow envelope (1957) (Ο Κίτρινος Φάκελος)
• Sergios and Vacchos (1959) (Σέργιος και Βάκχος)
• 10 (1960) (unfinished)