Byzantine Crime Novels in the Twenty-first Century: From History to Fiction

This lecture tackles the question of “authenticity” when writing crime novels set in the remote past. Agapitos’ three novels (published between 2003 and 2009 in Greece) that are set in the first half of ninth-century Byzantium during the rule of the last iconoclast emperor, Theophilos (r. 829–842), form the basis of a lively discussion about the challenges of producing a satisfactory narrative. The fairly clear generic conventions of a traditional British-style mystery are not applicable to a medieval culture such as Byzantium, starting with the basic issue of the absence of detection and the relevant detective. Contemporary fans of crime fiction have broad expectations about what a detective novel should be, but they also want a feeling of “real” history in the narrative. In his novels, the speaker tackles this problem by employing various techniques derived from Byzantine rhetoric and narrative, while at the same time using archaeological, historical and textual studies to offer a medieval yet contemporary crime story that feels medieval but is, in fact, postmodern.

Panagiotis Agapitos is the Gutenberg Distinguished Research Fellow in Byzantine Literature at the University of Mainz. Previously, he taught for 25 years at the University of Cyprus as Professor of Byzantine Literature and Culture in the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies. He studied at the University of Munich and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University.

This event is held under the auspices of the Consulate General of Greece in Los Angeles and made possible thanks to the generous support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF). This event is co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of Classics, UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies, and the Pourdavoud Institute for the Study of the Iranian World.