Sponsored :: New Book :: New Moon: Day One
New Moon: Day One, Fiction by Thanassis Valtinos
Translated from the Greek by Jane Assimakopoulos and Stavros Deligiorgis
Laertes, September 2024
Set in a provincial capital, in the penultimate throes of the Greek Civil War, New Moon: Day One is semi-autobiographical, a tale of two protagonists on the brink of manhood. They speak in bluntly human tones, but in precincts that echo of death the impulse to life is declared.
The elements of a screenplay are recast by Valtinos as a novel. Interposed with bursts of dialogue, and reading like stage directions, intimate scenes alternate with a wide-screen view. Fade-outs, as blank pages, punctuate the whole. Though the gaze is that of a camera—of pristine detachment—the energy is propulsive. The thread of a breathless suspense is drawn through a complex collage. It seems to precisely catch the rhythm of human becoming.
“Thanassis Valtinos is a masterful storyteller who has vividly captured in his novels and short stories some of the most turbulent and tragic periods in Greece‘s recent history. In “New Moon” he tells a coming-of-age tale of two boys who struggle to deal with their emerging sexual impulses as they try to survive the brutalities of a vicious civil war. A searing story by Greece’s premier living novelist at the top of his game.”
—Nicholas Gage
