The Transformations of Greek Working-Class Fiction from the Interwar Period to the Present

Abstract

Surveying a large corpus of Modern Greek fiction from the interwar years to the decade of the financial crisis (2010-2020) we set out to delineate the national inflection of ‘working-class fiction’ along the axes of theme and style as well as answerability, i.e. the engagement with working-class interests in distinct periods (interwar years, WWII and postwar, Metapolitefsi and beyond). Characterized by quantitative and aesthetic variability, the Greek version of the genre is shown to engage actively with topical contextual issues as well as with changing imperatives of authorial commitment and the shifting composition of the working class.