Petros Markaris in dialogue with Jesús Lens
PETROS MARKARIS in dialogue with Jesús Lens.
Within the framework of the Festival Granada Noir. Activity co-organized with the Tres Culturas del Mediterráneo Foundation.
The writer, playwright and screenwriter Petros Markaris was born in Istanbul in 1937, to an Armenian father and a Greek mother. Although residing in Athens since the 60s, it was not until 1974, following the fall of the dictatorship of the colonels, when he obtained the Greek nationality. His career as translator comes from an intense academic background in German language and culture.
Markaris is famous for his translation into Greek of such authors like Goethe, Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Schnitzler or Thomas Bernhard, among others. As screenwriter, he has co-written some of the masterpieces by Theo Angelopoulos as The Suspended Step of the Stork (1991), Ulysses’ Gaze (1995) or Eternity and a Day (1998). Márkaris, who began his literary career as playwright, did not start to write narrative until the age of 55, when he stumbled upon a character who has starred in all his crime novels ever since and who has become very famous in Europe: the police inspector Kostas Jaritos.
The full set of novels have been translated into Spanish: the novels Late-Night News [Noticias de la noche] (2000), Zone Defence [Defensa cerrada (2001), Che Committed Suicide [Suicidio perfecto] (Ediciones B, 2004), Basic Shareholder* [El accionista mayoritario] (2008), Old, Very Old* [Muerte en Estambul] (2009), Expiring Loans* [Con el agua al cuello] (2010), Termination* [Liquidación final] (2012), Bread, Education, Liberty* [Pan, educación, libertad] (2013), End Titles* [Hasta aquí hemos llegado] (2015) y Offshore* (2017), in addition to the short stories Un caso del comisario Jaritos y otros relatos clandestinos* (2006) y La muerte de Ulises* (2016). Markaris, notably after the economic recession which particularly battered Greece, became the most intellectual person in his country and one of the most popular and lucid in Europe. La Espada de Damocles* (2012) compiles some of his essays and articles about the crisis.
*These books have not been published yet in English
Jesús Lens (Granada 1970), writer, journalist, and cultural promoter, is graduated in Law by the University of Granada and is currently in charge of the communication department of BMN-Caja Granada for Andalusia. As essayist he has published Microcréditos. La revolución silenciosa (con Antonio-Claret García; Debate, 2007), in addition to the books about cinema Hasta donde el cine nos lleve (con Francisco J. Ortiz; Almed, 2009), Café-Bar Cinema (Almed, 2011) y Cineasta blanco, Corazón negro (Almed, 2013).
Lens is columnist of opinion and culture in the Granada daily paper IDEAL and he regularly contributes to Canal Sur Television. His blog, Pateando el Mundo has millions of readers. Cinema programmer, lecturer and expert in communication, Lens has taken part in festivals throughout Spain and has acted as member of the jury in literary awards such as La Semana Negra de Gijón or Francisco Ayala. In 2015, he created Granada Noir, a multicultural Andalusian festival dedicated to the noir novel, of which he is the Director along with Gustavo Gómez. The literary conversation between Jesús Lens and Petros Márkaris in the Federico García Lorca Centre, will be closing the third edition of the festival. It will be maintained in both languages, Spanish and Greek, and will have Vasiliki Kanelliadou (Salónica 1974), Spanish Arts professor at the Open University of Greece, as consecutive translator.
