Lecture by Panagiotis Agapitos, “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), which 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…