ABSTRACT
Though hardly a prolific author or one whose name is constantly on the lips of the average Greek reader, Elias Papadimitrakopoulos (b. 1930) enjoys the greater merit of being esteemed by his peers, by his fellow Greek writers and critics, as a stylistic virtuoso, a sensitive, perspicacious craftsman of the emotions who has given voice to a community neglected by modern Greek letters, the small provincial town, in the present case the town of Pyrgos in the Peloponnesian province of Eleia. In a national literature crowded with mountain villages, island villages, Thessaloniki, and of course Athens, Papadimitrakopoulos reveals the human richness hidden in this seemingly nondescript burg, dominated commercially by Patras and touristically by the nearby site of Olympia.
