Mechanisms of Loss

"Michel Faïs is one of the most enterprising contemporary Greek writers, able to reinvigorate his themes and techniques and engage his readers with subtle narratives. Mechanisms of Loss contains two of his finest novellas."—Dimitris Tziovas, University of Birmingham

"Faïs has a remarkable literary sensitivity to troubled inner geographies that defy logical explanation. Evoking the emotional frequencies of Kafka’s writings, the powerful centrifugal force of compulsive self-observation propels both novellas in Mechanisms of Loss.”—Bart Soethaert, Freie Universität Berlin

"These two novellas are emblematic of the work of a writer whose place in the modern Greek literary canon is assured. Faïs’s narrators—compelling, indignant, neurotic, rambling; their vernacular rhythms deftly captured in David Connolly’s translation—are searching for answers across the urban landscapes of their daily lives like ghosts trapped in a world that offers no salvation.”—Panos Karnezis, author of Little Infamies

“There’s no doubt that Michel Faïs’s fiction transformed the Greek literary landscape of the late twentieth century. These two novellas display exquisitely this unique writer’s pivotal tropes: the quirky workings of memory, inflections in narrative voices so torrential they yield to parody, and a language that veers towards self-destruction.”—Eleni Papargyriou, University of Patras