The Commune

The final novel by Marios Chakkas, one of Greece’s most well-known and evocative writers.
A legend in his home country of Greece but virtually unknown abroad, The Commune is the final work of Marios Chakkas, composed in the months preceding his early death in 1972. Chakkas was born under the Fascist regime and reared as a socialist revolutionary, and The Commune is his reckoning with the uncertainty of the past and the madness of the present as the military junta secures its position and the spirit of the socialist insurrection fades. Returning from political exile, Chakkas confronts the decay and ruin of his Athenian neighborhood as he recounts childhood gunfights in the streets, churches filled with asbestos, vanished comrades, and violent squabbles over memorials for executed partisans in his singular voice which swerves from scorching poetic indignation to gallows humor to metaphysical meditation.

Marios Chakkas (1931–1972) was a Greek writer whose life and work were deeply influenced by political persecution, particularly during the Greek junta. Born in Makrakomi and raised in Kaisariani, Chakkas began his activism early, helping prisoners in Gyaros at age 19. His political activities led to his arrest and a four-year jail sentence in 1954, interrupting his university studies. In the 1960s, he published his only lifetime poetic collection, Beautiful Summer, and continued to face persecution for his political affiliations. Chakkas wrote three theatrical solo acts in his final years before succumbing to cancer at the age of 41, during the junta period, leaving behind a legacy of politically charged literature that reflected his tumultuous experiences.
Chloe Tsolakoglou is a Greek-American writer who grew up in Athens, Greece. A PhD Student in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, her work has been published in or is forthcoming by Denver Quarterly’s FIVES, The Adroit Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere.