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This is a comparative textual analysis of a body of relatively neglected works by Greek Australian writers Dimitris Tsaloumas, Antigone Kefala, Stylianos Charkianakis, Dean Kalimnios, Christos Tsiolkas, Fotini Epanomitis and Helen Koukoutsis. The focus is on reading their texts as a bridge between multiculturalism and world literature given each writer identifies in various ways with peripheral cosmopolitanism as they merge high-brow literary forms with the quotidian paramythi, or the storytelling oral tradition. The different ways they do this registers the writers’ ambivalent relationship with their origins through their transculturally mediated expression. Discovering new possibilities in literary texts which have oral traces becomes a productive way to look at the question of translatability as posed by scholars of multiculturalism and world literature, such as Sneja Gunew, Emily Apter and Pheng Cheah.
‘Though nothing could be more worldly than Australian multicultural literature, it has been largely boxed away from “world literature” as conceived by scholars and reviewers. Anna DImitriou’s searching examination, perceptive about and respectful of a range of very different writers, shows how the achievements and processes of Greek Australian literature are of global resonance. From the scabrous satire of Christos Tsiolkas to the sonorous eloquence of Dimitris Tsaloumas, from the materiality of Antigone Kefala to the spirituality of Stylianos Charkianakis, to the arduous ironies of Dean Kalimniosand Fotini Eoanomitis, Dimitriou provides the overview of Greek Australian literature for which the field has long waited.’ — Nicholas Birns, New York University
Preface and Acknowledgements; 1. Greek Australian Literature: Between Multiculturalism and World Literature; 2. Diasporic Transformations of the Oral Traditional Paramythi; 3. Dimitris Tsaloumas: Outspoken Visionary Poet or Disillusioned Exile?; 4. Antigone Kefala: Writing against Aphanisis; 5. Fotini Epanomitis’s The Mule’s Foal: A Literature of Transgression; 6. Christos Tsiolkas’s Dead Europe: A Polyphonic Tale of Protest; 7. Helen Koukoutsis’s Cicada Chimes: Shifting between Worlds; 8. Stylianos Charkianakis: Paramythic Transformations through Poetry; 9. Dean kalimnios: Religious Surrealist or Proud Neo-Hellenic Scholar?; 10. Conclusion: Towards a Rereading of Greek Australian Literature; Index