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QUESTION: Like Nobel Prize-winning writer Ivo Andric most of whose novels chronicle his native Bosnia’s history you are preoccupied with Greek history, describing life of a region in which East and West have for centuries clashed with their interests and influences, a region whose population is composed of different nationalities and religions. Is there a dominant trait inherent to Balkan literature? Could one in your understanding consider the existence of an anthropological type that could be called Homo Balkanicus?

KAPANDAI: If there is such an anthropological type it is up to the anthropologists to reply your question. For my part I would repeat what I already said and firmly believe, in short that we share centuries of a common, troubled and sometimes really tragic historical past, the study of which on one hand will help to have a better insight of ourselves and on the other, according to my way of thinking, should make us all, people of the Balkan peninsula, have a more profound understanding of each other and be more benevolent towards all our neighbours.

QUESTION: Your historical novel Απειρωτάν και Τούρκων (About Epirots and Turks, 1990) was awarded with the Christian Letters Award and the Ouranis Award of the Athens Academy (1992). Do you consider it your best book?

KAPANDAI: I could not really say. I look upon my work as a whole and find merits and demerits in all my books.

QUESTION: Being married to the well-renowned Greek sculptor Vassos Kapandais you were sharing common spiritual values. In 2007 the Benaki Museum hosted a retrospective exhibit of all his works. Would you elaborate more on his artistic quests?

KAPANADAI: Vassos Kapandais was, - and this is not the personal opinion of his wife -, a great “passionate” sculptor. You must allow me though not to elaborate more on his work. The catalogue of the retrospective exhibit of his work, published by the Benaki Museum and ‘Agra Publications’, Athens (2007), might shed more light on his oeuvre and give the public a more specific answer to this question.

QUESTION: Your book Seven Times the Ring comprised of seven short novels loosely connected by the story of a ring handed from generation to generation bearing historical memories from the Sack of Constantinople to the Greek Revolution of 1821 has been translated into Bulgarian (Balkani Publishers, Sofia, 2005), and English (Mc Gill University Press, Montreal,1994). Is the book Eight Times the Ring that came out in 2008 a ‘sequel’ of it? What is its plot, is it a string of stories related to each other in the same inventive way as the ones in Seven Times the Ring?

KAPANDAI: Seven Times the Ring was first published by Hestia Publishers in 1989. Eight Times the Ring came out by Kastaniotis almost ten years later. It is not a sequel of the first book. It is actually the same book but it also contains one more - the eighth story -, that takes place in the present day in Cyprus, after the occupation of the island. The new book title was derived from it.

QUESTION: Your last novel With a View to Life (Με θέα τη ζωή, 2009) was marked by literary reviews as a prophetical book. The crisis and decline of modern society and its protagonists sound a familiar everyday reality. In all your historical novels you as a writer more or less introduce your own views on events and the surrounding reality without though being autobiographical. In another interview you say that modern society is crippled by stereotypes, everyone wants to be young, beautiful and rich. People deny the individuality of their personality and when this happens it leads to a catastrophe, thus you detect in it an element of the social twilight we are witnessing. Do you think destruction might bring a decaying social fabric to a productive revival?

KAPANDAI: Yes, I do. It is a well known fact to those who study history that only through wars or great catastrophies societies in decline like the ones of our own times may be in a way reborn. It is a thought that gives me strength and helps me overcome the “would be terrors” of our near future, we are bombarded with ‘for free’ on a daily basis by mass media.