The mother of M. Karagatsis, Anthi Rodopoulou, passed away on March 25, 1946. Karagatsis immediately began writing The Great Sleep, which was published in August of the same year.
This intense autobiographical element, a melancholic or even mourning atmosphere of intimacy and warmth (even if often eroded), gives the work a different, milder character. The tones are low, the intensities relaxed, the language smoother, without exaggeration.
The usual reflections and thoughts of the author on humanity, literature, and numerous other topics are not absent: from the questioning of conventional morality and philosophical meditations on love and death, the two sexes, ideologies, racial identity, the instinct of domination, and the Root, to the laudatory remarks about Victor Hugo and his 'terrible testicles.'
[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]
