ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the ways in which contemporary Greek literature has represented and engaged with the situation. Greek literary production of the past ten years includes quite a number of novels, belonging to a variety of different literary genres. In the physically shattered Balkans of the beginning of the twentieth century the underground routes of the waters that are united in the fount of Paradise are a symbolic substratum to fluid borders and fluid identities. It is well known that the representation of the Balkans in different European discourses depended on the appreciative norm and on the vantage point of the observer, but in reality it produced the same stereotype of the inhabitant of the Balkans as a bloodthirsty barbarian. While Greece, which constitutes a geographical part of the Balkans, is also included in the representation, Maria Todorova points out that the Balkan identity never played a leading role in the formation of the Greek consciousness.
