Vassilis Vassilikos

A progressive parliamentary deputy is scheduled to appear at a political rally. Meanwhile, local political bosses plot his assassination. Thugs are recruited to disrupt the rally. Rumors begin to spread. But the forces already set in motion are irresistible. Z is the story of a crime, a time, a place, and people transformed by events. Z was published in Greece in 1966, and banned there one year later. It is based on an actual political assassination in 1963 in Salonika. The victim was Gregory Lambrakis, a socialist legislator and outspoken critic of the government. But Lambrakis's killers could not have anticipated the public response. His funeral became a political event; by the time the cortege reached Athens, 400,000 people were following the coffin in silence. In the nation's capital, the letter Z suddenly appeared on walls, sidewalks, posters--everywhere. Z stands for the Greek verb zei, "he lives."

Z, 50th Anniversary Edition

A brilliant work of the imagination as well as a meditation on writing itself, the story follows a biographer’s investigation into the life and works of a famous, yet highly mysterious, deceased Greek author named Glafkos Thrassakis. At the crossroads where magical realism and political fiction meet, Vassilis Vassilikos’s buoyant literary imagination flourishes beyond the confines of conventional narrative structures.

A Novel

The Few Things I Know About Glafkos Thrassakis

Greece's most acclaimed living novelist gives us a magical realist portrait of contemporary Europe and contemporary Europeans. Here are seven tales that explore the themes of materialism, post Cold War politics, love, religious faith, and the power of imagination. In the tradition of Gabriel García Márquez and Luigi Pirandello, Vassilikos writes of the fantasies within reality, the spirit in existence, and the art within life.

Vassilis Vassilikos

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