This year marks twenty years since the death of George Ioannou. The event has not received the attention it deserves, judging by the indifference of most newspapers that shape the conditions of our literary marketplace with their book sections. The reason is obvious. "Ioannou doesn’t sell," a publisher addicted to the literary genre of bestsellers declared from on high a few days ago. Yet, Ioannou, up until his death, was the most "bestselling" of the prose writers of his time.

"Ioannou doesn’t sell today," the publisher analyzed, "because he does not express the spirit of our time." This observation would be accurate if the deeper purpose of literature were the expression of the spirit of an era. The reason why Ioannou is one of our greatest prose writers has been convincingly explained by critics.

Ioannou mythologizes realistically the experience of the autobiographical hero in his short stories of his personal fate, with a writing style that represents his adventures with a dreamlike clarity. And it is this intricate mythologizing and the ontological dimension it provides to the depiction of his world that I believe will make his work read in the days to come, just as the works of Vizyenos and Papadiamantis are read today.

(30-8-2005, Nasos Vagenas) [Excerpt from the Foreword]