About

My first novel, August in the Vanishing City, is a literary action thriller set in Cyprus during the volatile 1990s. It's a story of obsession, passion, and the attempt to come to terms with historical injustice. It's good. You should read it.

August in the Vanishing City

“Beautifully Written” Varosha, Famagusta: The City of the Vanished Reeling from the discovery that his lifelong love Joanna has fallen for his best friend Elias, Petros makes a desperate attempt to win her back by reclaiming a memory from war-torn Varosha. In a late-night flight across the border, he must

Lakis Polycarpou • AuthorLakis Polycarpou

I'm currently working on my second novel, Lifeboat — a near-future dystopian thriller that wrestles with the traumatic and psychologically damaging effects of pandemics and creeping authoritarianism. It's taking longer than I'd like to finish.

In the meantime, I also write about the intersection of fiction, politics, and culture, which are increasingly inseparable.

I'm obsessed with injustice and the way that tyranny is built on lies. It’s no exaggeration to say that we are drowning in careless and malicious narratives — conspiracies, disinformation, misinformation, and hallucinations that no amount of fact checking seems able to counter — and yet, so many people seem unable to grasp the contours of the frankly terrifying reality being constructed in front of us.

Great fiction tells the truth. Or at least it strives to; at least a part of the truth. Sometimes fiction tells us something obvious. Other times, the message is subtler, more nuanced, more contradictory. Sometimes it offers hope; other times it flirts with despair. But even tragedy can bear witness, expand the imagination, allow us to more clearly see what was hidden — or what was right in front of our eyes.

In many ways, fiction — books like 1984, The Trial, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, or shows like Severance — give us a clearer picture of what's happening than the news.

I've come to believe that the biggest problem we face in this authoritarian moment is a failure of imagination. If that's true, journalism alone won’t save us, and neither will the facts, at least not by themselves. I'm not sure if fiction can, but at the very least, it can expand the realm of the possible in our minds — and right now, we need bigger imaginations.

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