The Practical Joke

This is a beloved novel published for the first time in 1982 and relaunched now. “The Practical Joke is the manifesto of a rebel woman in a man's world, since the man is still holding the reins, still dominating on heaven and earth...The revolutionary act undermines his power, making a fool of him, knocking him down with laughter,” writes the Greek poet Nanos Valaoritis. And the writer and journalist Evgenios Aranitsis adds: “They say that to write a novel you need an obsession. It's true; you need an idea, any idea... Nabokov, for instance, chose the nymphet and Norman Mailer the foolish ways of the middle classes. Every good novel cultivates the obsession until it shines, it acquires internal legitimation and coherence. This is the wonder of “The Practical Joke”: the obsession here is language itself, naïve and dying yet capable of ingenious plots, of laughing at loneliness and of captivating people's eccentricities in a relentless, conspirational whisper”.