Yannis Kyrlis is a
man who knows how to handle dreams and paint daylight with marvellous splashes
of darkness. This is a collection with twelve short stories of sweet confusion,
translated from Greek into English, and published by Austin MacAuley in 2017.
In The Threat, Kyrlis builds his plot
slowly and steadily and holds you there in this eerie story with clear-headed,
fresh prose. The Quest is a touching,
almost romantic story, and readers might find themselves asking if they have
lost their hearts, if a lost heart can still be beautiful. It is an inspiring
tale of a man who tries to find himself, helped by a stranger who knows how to
recognise and paint the beauty of lost hearts, the Illustrator. Like the Judge
in the story, sensitive readers will judge themselves and their actions.
Some stories are
very short, some are longer, like Confession
in a Café, my favourite story in this beautiful collection. Here we witness
again the author’s natural gift to bring in dreams halfway through a piece that
is pure realism and take us once more into his strange world of symbols.
If you are looking
for explanations, look elsewhere, The
Quest by Yiannis Kyrlis will give you none of that.
About
the reviewer
Alexandros
Plasatis is an immigrant ethnographer who writes
fiction in English, his second language. His work has appeared in UK and
American anthologies and magazines. He is a volunteer at Leicester City of
Sanctuary, where he helps find and
develop new creative talent within the refugee and asylum seeker
community. He lives in Leicester.
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