Product Description

Panos Karnezis' remarkable stories are all set in the same nameless Greek village. His characters are the people who live there - the priest, the barber, the whore, the doctor, the seamstress, the mayor - and the occasional animal: a centaur, a parrot that recites Homer, a horse called History. Their lives intersect, as lives do in a small place, and they know each other's secrets - the hidden crimes, the mysteries, the little infamies that men commit. Karnezis observes his villagers with a forgiving eye, and creates a world where magic invariably loses out to harsh reality, a world at once universal, funny and utterly compelling.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #125145 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The world that Panos Karzenis takes us into in Little Infamies is that of an obscure Greek village. As we are introduced to the quirky inhabitants--the barber, the priest, the prostitute, the doctor, the mayor and the seamstress, we are granted insights into the lives of a series of strongly involving characters, and we are drawn ever deeper into a vividly realised society. But Panos Karnezis is like the magician who distracts us with his left hand while performing sleight-of-hand with his right. In fact, the village here is a strange and magical place: other inhabitants include the occasional animal: a parrot that can recite Homer, a horse called History--even a centaur. All these strange lives intersect, and in such a cloistered village, few secrets are kept hidden for long. Everybody learns about the eponymous little infamies that the human race commits.

This evocative and idiosyncratic book is a singular achievement for its insightful author. Perhaps the shadow of Borges is at the author's elbow (as well as a shot of Marquez's magic realism), but these creations are very much his own. We turn each page of Little Infamies agog, constantly diverted by the contrary actions of the characters here. But Karnezis is fully aware that to weave his spell with maximum power, it is always necessary to remain plausible--we always need that grittiness to anchor us in reality. And the nameless Greek village here comes to feel like a place we could walk the streets of, if we just knew where it was. But here it is, in the pages of this remarkable book. The journey is well worthwhile. --Barry Forshaw

The Times
‘Karnezis has captured the spirit of his people and spoken for them in a spellbinding, universal voice’

Independent
‘Karnezis’s robust prose, as luminous and flinty as his landscape, sharpens his focus on captive souls in a lonely place’

Customer Reviews

Modern Greek Tragedies
Maybe I have a short attention span but I like short stories. British publishers have become loth to publish them recently because, "Nobody reads them." Many that are published comprise incomplete scraps that wouldn't make a novel, or literary self-indulgent "stories" in which nothing much happens. No surprise, then, that the short story is in decline in the UK despite thriving in Europe and the USA.

This excellent collection comes from Greek author, Panos Karnezis. Although his style is not similar to Chekhov's short stories, his subject matter is: ordinary tales about ordinary people, and like Chekhov he manages to make the seemingly ordinary into something fascinating. Karnezis writes about the people in a poor, isolated Greek village with a series of partly-connected tales. Subtle and blatant, he uses just enough detail to propel his narratives along, as his all-too-human subjects display their darker aspects, allowing Karnezis's sly humour to break through the darkness and illuminate these knowing portraits of people trapped by both poverty and geography.

A minor masterpiece; I await a British author of short stories who can equal this achievement.

A Rare Gem Of A Book
The short story, that stalwart of the sixties and seventies, has become decidedly unfashionable in the third millennium; what was once a precise and treasured art is now shunned by public and publisher alike. It takes a brave new author - as well as a ground breaking publisher like Vintage - to cut against the grain and write a collection of short stories as his debut but Karnezis seems assured of success if greater riches are to follow. Little Infamies is a saga of stories - episodes is perhaps nearer the mark - about a small, anonymous and lively Greek village and its colourful inhabitants. At times the stories read like novellas with a winding, barely credible plot while at others they seem more like articles from the local paper, capturing as they do the rich essence of character and event. Karnezis is, undoubtedly, a fine story teller in the tradition of Italo Calvino; the delicate balance of fantasy, myth and contemporary fact is a skill which few writers of the short story seem to possess. Angela Carter and Helen Simpson excelled at this and Karnezis displays admirable talent and potential. The nineteen stories in this collection can be read as easily alone as in the context of the book - a sign of a confident, practised story teller. I look forward to his next work and hope the wait is not too long.

An exciting debut from a writer to watch
Karnezis creates his world with exquisite control and a wonderfully resonant use of language. His extraordinary collection of oddball characters - the bird fancier, the whore, the priest, the driver of the bus to the county capital - love and hate, work, drink and die in an unspecified Greek village, balanced on the border between magic and relentless reality. Playful, imaginative, insightful and deeply humourous,this is a talent to get excited about.