Praise for Margarita Karapanou
Kassandra & the Wolf
No retelling of Kassandra and the Wolf can explain its charm, or its riddles.… [It] is one of those rare creations that come alive mysteriously, without any antecedents. The book is original, terrifying, complete. It invents its own history, eases in and out of nightmare as it mingles dream and fact. Kassandra and the Wolf is a short, muscular novel with an absolute sense of craft.… The language throughout is merciless and crisp. Wherever Margarita Karapanou has come from, wherever she goes, Kassandra and the Wolf, remains a stunning achievement: a lovely, sinister book.
—Jerome Charyn, New York Times
Karapanou… write[s] of childhood with such lyric ferocity; her Kassandra and the Wolf has the jagged fantastic substance of [Bruno] Schulz’s long story “Spring,” with a vicious pre-pubescent sexual element chillingly added.
—John Updike, New York Times
Though Kassandra and the Wolf received considerable attention in France, it has been almost entirely neglected in this country, until last fall when John Updike mentioned it in a lead article in the New York Times Book Review. There Updike wondered if the barely known Hungarian genius Bruno Schulz had “emboldened” Karapanou to write of childhood with “such lyric ferocity.” The answer is likely no, that Proust, Camus, and Ionesco sharpened her sensibility (she knew the latter two) and that Greek writers, like Yannis Ritsos, provided the “emboldening.” The lyric ferocity is her very own, inimitable…
—Lois Welch, The Guardian
A frank, poetic, uncluttered graph of the state of childhood.
—Edna O’Brien
Rien ne va plus
Beginning simply, this remarkable tale escalates in conflict and complexity, and proves even more engaging the second time through.
Rien ne va plus is one of the most haunting, affecting novels I've ever read. Brilliantly translated by Karen Emmerich, Karapanou's words have stayed with me like the afterglow of a flash, or the sting of a punch.
[In Sleepwalker] Margarita Karapanou leads us into the labyrinth where God lives. One must read her as one reads Rimbaud or Blake.… Karapanou’s insistence on tearing off our everyday clothes and ridiculous masks makes her, indeed, a truly remarkable writer.
—Jerome Charyn, Le Monde