Michel Fais

Michel Fais (born April 1, 1957) is a Greek novelist, short story writer, playwright, screenwriter, and literary critic. He was born in Komotini (Thrace) and is of Jewish descent. He works as editor of the books section for the Greek newspaper Efimerida ton Syntakton and teaches creative writing in the program organized by Patakis Publishers, at the University of Western Macedonia (in Florina) and at the Open University of Greece.
Fais' original literary work is comprised mainly of novels, short stories and theatre plays. In his first novel Autobiography of a Book (Αυτοβιογραφία ενός βιβλίου, 1994) Fais renders a fragmented account of Komotini that not only presents the difficulties of (re)constructing the complex history of a town and its people with strong Muslim, Christian, Asia Minor refugee and Jewish presences, but also adopts an ironic attitude towards the obsession with auto-fiction and towards novel writing itself, as the novel's title suggests. The book received substantial critical attention and has been translated into French (1996) and Romanian (2007).
For the collection From the Same Glass and Other Stories (Απ' το ίδιο ποτήρι και άλλες ιστορίες, 1999) Fais was awarded the Greek State Literature Prize for the Short Story (2000). Fais makes use of varying language registers and writing styles ranging from telegraphic accounts, heart-rending monologues, a one-act play script, intimate notes, to a series of apparently journalistic observations. Through a range of methods, his work discloses the mechanisms of loss, mourning, and rememberance which one may find at the core of the dysfunctional relationships and the patterns of obstructed life in these stories. This critically acclaimed collection of short stories has been translated into French (2003), Spanish (2005), and English (2007). Several of these stories were included in anthologies (e.g. Angelic & Black: Contemporary Greek Short Stories, 2006) or published in (literary) magazines all over the world, including China, Czech Republic, Germany, and the U.S.A.
Fais's first novella, Aegypius monachus (2001), marks the author's further progress in the realm of self-examination and shares common literary ground with the letters and diaries of Franz Kafka. The centrifugal forces of compulsive (self-)observation resonate with the frequencies of disruption and distress in the latter's writings. The novels God’s Honey and Ashes (Το μέλι και η στάχτη του Θεού, 2002) and Greek Insomnia (Ελληνική αϋπνία, 2004) elaborate the writer's hybrid identity (as Greek-Jewish) through the respective fictional biographies of a Greek (Romaniote Jew) painter, essayist and researcher of Greek shadow puppetry (Giulio Caïmi) and a well-known writer from his region of birth Thrace (Giorgios Vizyenos). Fais' later prose works, Purple Laughter (Πορφυρά γέλια, 2010), Grave Offerings (Κτερίσματα, 2012), Out of Nowhere (Από το πουθενά, 2015), Lady Cortisol (2016), and As Never (Όπως ποτέ, 2019), take up and deepen many of the themes and techniques from his previous works and demonstrate his remarkable literary sensitivity to troubled inner realities which escape logical explanation.
While several of his books have been adapted for the theatre, most notably Greek Insomnia (Ελληνική αϋπνία, 2006, directed by Roula Pateraki), Danubian Trout (Πέστροφα Δουνάβεως, 2010, based on Aegypius Monachus and directed by Lilly Melemé) and La Petite Mort (2014, based on the novel Grave Offerings and directed by Lilly Melemé), Fais also wrote two theatrical works (Yellow Dog / Το κίτρινο σκυλί, 2009 and Nobody’s Bench / Το παγκάκι του κανένα, 2014) which were staged several times in Greece. He co-wrote screenplays with film director Nikos Panagiotopoulos for Delivery (2004), Athens-Constantinople (2008) and Rembrandt's Daughter (2015).
Selections of Fais' photographic work, which is closely related to the main characters and the general atmosphere of disruption and distress in his prose work, were presented in Athens, Thessaloniki and Vienna. His two most important solo exhibitions were curated by the Art Space 24 in Athens (Last Look / Ύστερο βλέμμα, 1996 and City on its Knees / Η πόλη στα γόνατα, 2002). In 2016 a photo retrospective exhibition (1996-2016) titled Broken Look (Σπασμένο βλέμμα) was held in the Pleiades Bookstore in Athens.
Apart from his literary and photographic work, Fais has been a contributing literary critic to several literary magazines (e.g. Anti, Diavazo, Enteuktirio) and newspapers (Kathimerini, Eleftheros Typos, Eleutherotypia, Efimerida ton Syntakton) and edited literary series for a number of Greek publishers, most prominently for Patakis Publishers. From 1994 to 1997 his research and editing work on the folklorist, aesthete and painter Giulio Caïmi contributed significantly to the reassessment of his artistic and theoretical production.
== References ==
Category:Greek writers
Category:Greek novelists
Category:1957 births