Born in Athens in 1953. He is a novelist, translator and film director. His translations include more than thirty crime novels by writers such as Hammett, Chandler, Highsmith, Charyn and Ellroy, on whom he has also written a number of studies. Besides crime fiction, he has also translated authors such as Stevenson, Kipling, Isherwood, London, Anderson, Huxley and Nabokov. As a film director, he has made two short movies and over sixty episodes for the acclaimed Greek television series Reportage sans frontieres and Paths
of Modern Thought.
 
ANDREAS APOSTOLIDIS

CRIME STORIES
FOR FIVE DECADES

CRIME SHORT STORIES (232 pages, 17.5X12 cm.)
 

This is a collection of six short crime stories whose chronological timespan extends from 1944 to 1986. Their subject matter concerns principle acts and crimes of political violence.
The December riots in Athens in 1944, Thessalonica during the Greek Civil War with foreign diplomats and reporters, the Cold War during the 1950s and the assassination of members of the Greek Communist Party, murder on the island of Hydra in 1962, left-wingers versus the henchmen of the military dictatorship, religious sects and terrorist activity in the 1980s all provide for material for Apostolidis' tales.

While these tales are set within the context of real events they draw on the exaggerated style of popular magazines of the period, playing with the style of crime reporting and the comically anti-Communist radio reports of the day. They focus on the fictionalisation of politics and the manners of the popular detective tale, as well as a certain amount of pastiche of literature of the genre. Behind all the themes in the tales, we see the author deal in ironic fashion with the Greek identity as it developed through these decades.