I write in English because I live in England and see writing as a way of communicating with the people around me. I am aware that the language one writes in influences the way one thinks. If I were writing in Greek I believe I would have still written the same kind of stories but perhaps in a different voice or perspective. By not writing in my mother tongue I have perhaps sacrificed what one might call intimacy in the turn of phrase in return for reaching a different audience. For example I avoid slang but also certain historical, political or social references of which a foreign audience is likely not to have knowledge. This is not necessarily contemptible. What is lost can be earned back in other ways. For example I feel that distancing myself from my characters and settings by way of language has sometimes made it easier to see under and beyond the linguistic or other clichés which often go unchallenged in a mother tongue.

​

Also writing in another language I am keenly aware of how much an artificial creation words are. One could bend them, cut them down and varnish them to express what he or she needs to. It is a very exciting process. And one can work towards discovering a style of writing that suits one’s temperament and purpose. I think I am fortunate to have found mine, more or less. One can ultimately express everything just as well in English or Greek, but English is perhaps more flexible. By that I mean that these days there is not one proper way of speaking or writing English. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that so many people around the world speak different forms of English, the legacy of the Empire etc. Greek, on the other hand, is spoken by much fewer people. Its grammar is more rigid, exact, less adventurous, I think. There are of course obvious disadvantages in writing in a language that is not one’s mother tongue – conveying a sense of humour for example. I try to deal with this by describing a situation rather than by wordplay, the way a native speaker might do. In any case I like the stories that can be transplanted anywhere and in any period in history without losing their meaning. For this reason I am less interested in real landscapes and the detailed customs and attitudes of people and more in their basic humanity, which is Greek as much as Turkish or British or Portuguese.

​

I translate my books for the Greek edition myself, which is the reason I suspect I have been invited to take part in this panel. The first thing I notice in any translation, including my own, is that it sounds very different to the original regardless of its accuracy. It has a different rhythm to it. That is because a translated word usually has a different number of syllables compared to the original, and the length of a sentence changes, too. The different number of syllables, the different sounds of vowels, the different length of sentences give the translated text a different feel. I like to call it the music of the text. Also I notice that some of the humour, and particularly irony, are often lost in translation because certain expressions simply do not exist in another language, or a reference is lost. I try to avoid idiomatic language, and my Greek translations are almost word for word, down to the hyphens and commas. Maybe this is an exaggeration. After publication I start to notice phrases that do not sound very elegant in their Greek version, but I have no regrets. This is probably because I lack integrity. But I also believe that the Greek editions of my books, whatever their subject matter, are ultimately translations, and I much prefer it when translated fiction is not rendered into colloquial idiom. I appreciate its strangeness and slight unfamiliarity, which remind the reader that it communicates an alien point of view, a foreign experience and invokes the sensations of a journey away from home.