Like a discus thrower

Christos Hadjipapas often manages to transform experiential and historical material into literature, integrating lessons learnt from the contemporary European novel (e.g. Milan Kundera), especially in his longer works of prose. With new techniques (such as the breakdown of narrative continuity, increased self-reference, dissolution of linear succession and simultaneousness), he sheds light on certain aspects of Cypriot society through the eyes of his characters.

Eros becomes a determinative and catalytic force in the lives of his characters. Quite often, their sexuality is underlined, even if love scenes surface in the art of the language. The writer intentionally pursues the play on words, the linguistic double entendres and nuance, while incorporating poetic prose and the Cypriot idiom. […] The language is frequently intellectual, commentative, cryptic, spicy, mocking and provocative; at times, it is disproportionately profound for the mouth of its twelve-year
old protagonist-narrator, given that the author – in essence – adopts the gaze, perception and – in the first part of the novel – the lexicon of an adolescent