GUILT & The Storyteller and the Truth

Abstract

Guilt is a historical novel set in the second half of the twentieth century (1963 – 1975) in the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. The story begins three years after the island was granted its independence from the British, when intense intercommunal violence between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots was on the rise, and ends several months after the Turkish invasion in the summer of 1974. Guilt follows the life of a Greek Cypriot from her childhood to her adulthood, depicting the difficulty of growing up during politically troubled times as well as the life of women in the seventies in Cyprus. Guilt is a Bildungsroman novel. Although history and politics are in the background of the novel, national emergence often affects the relationship of the heroine with her family, friends and lovers; the public sphere and the private sphere are interlaced. Guilt is a fictional story shaped around familial accounts of the Turkish invasion as well as of the everyday life of Cypriots prior to it, which means the novel is to a certain extent autobiographical. Concerning the structure, the novel is separated into a number of sections, which jump in time, as the memories of the heroine lead the unfolding of events. In the critical commentary, whose title is “The Storyteller and the Truth,” I discuss the novels, books and journals that have helped me write Guilt, redraft it and understand it fully. In the critical commentary, I focus on the autobiographical element, the idea of memories, history and politics, what genre Guilt belongs in, and finally, the relationship between nation and gender. There is a dearth of Cypriot literature and I wish Guilt can contribute to change that fact as well as draw attention to a country that is often either forgotten or seen merely as a tourist destination.

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ORCID for Ranka Primorac: orcid.org/0000-0003-1127-1175

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