Dendrites - by Kallia Papadaki (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

World Literature Today's Notable Translation of 2024

Winner of the 2017 European Union Prize for Literature for readers of Min Jin Lee and The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

When young Minnie is orphaned, the Campanis family decides to take her in. Ex-hippie Susan and her husband Basil, a second-generation Greek American, along with their daughter Leto react to Minnie's arrival in ways that make old family scars flare up again. Set in crisis-ridden 1980s Camden, New Jersey, among a community of immigrants trying and failing to realize the American dream, Dendrites is a poetical elegy to dignity and courage. In this sensitively told story about the quest for a meaningful life amid the ruins of lost second chances, Kallia Papadaki, one of Greek literature's most brilliant voices, delivers an unforgettable novel about the power of hope and compassion in the face of adversity.

Review Quotes

Praise for DendritesWorld Literature Today's Notable Translations of 2024

"Dendrites is not your conventional immigration story, and that's partly attributed to Papadaki's adroit storytelling. Combining the seemingly incongruent styles of stream of consciousness-reminiscent of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse--with the density of plot in nonlinear novels--echoing Gabriel Garcíiacute;a Máaacute;rquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude--the author produces a rich narrative with fluidity and crispness that readers relish." --World Literature Today

"I loved this fierce, beautiful book. Kallia Papadaki is a
truth teller who, with uncommon grace and undeniable power, brings her central
characters and the challenges they face in 1980s Camden brilliantly to life.
Add Karen Emmerich's marvelous translation to the mix and you have an
undeniable winner. I can't recommend it strongly enough." --LAIRD HUNT, author of the 2021 National Book Award finalist Zorrie

"Dendrites is a novel that follows three
generations of a Greek immigrant family living in the United States. Papadaki's
attention to the minor is a driving force in the novel. Dendrites is
filled with ordinary people, working-class immigrants as they strive for an
American dream that always seems just out of reach. Personal joys and crises,
chance encounters, and historical events imprint themselves on these lives,
altering their directions in small and profound ways. Karen Emmerich's translation brings Papadaki's compassionate
and intelligent storytelling to English-speaking readers for the first time,
and the writing feels as alive in English as it does in the original Greek. It
is a breathless book, unspooling in long ribbons of thought. Sentences stretch
out across the page, holding on for as long as they can, and yet not a word is
wasted. Dendrites shows us that everything matters: every
life, every encounter, every ordinary day, every piece of falling snow-- despite
the knowledge that like everything else, it will all eventually melt away." --Asymptote Journal

"What possibilities do individuals really have when they find themselves in devastating conditions? This question, of Kafkaesque extraction, unites the lives of the characters who inhabit this extraordinary novel. Marginality is not a choice, but a circumstance and a fatality, and Kallia Papadaki explores these margins in the lives of Greek emigrants with profound insight and empathy. The result is a wise and sensitive novel, but not only that, because Kallia is a virtuoso in the art of storytelling, which is increasingly a rarity these days. The result is a cohesive novel, with highly elaborate literary language and a perfect narrative structure. And whose characters shake us to the core."--RONALDO MENÉNDEZ

"In a fascinating and absorbing read, Dendrites captures the intricate and convoluted lives of everyday people and, like a museum, preserves their stories, aspirations, fears, and ambitions. Dendrites is an enthralling, multigenerational novel about a Greek immigrant, Nondas Kambanis, who struggles to make a life for himself in the US and his son, Vassilis, who although born in the "promised land" is equally destitute, wondering whether to make the opposite journey back

About the Author

KALLIA PAPADAKI was born in Didymoteicho, Greece, and grew up in Thessaloniki. She works as a professional screenwriter. Her critically acclaimed short-story collection Ο ήχος του ακάλυπτου "The Back-Lot Sound" won the Diavazo Journal New Writers Award. September, her first feature-length script, won the 2010 International Balkan Fund Script Development Award, received the Nipkow Scholarship in Berlin, and premiered at the 48th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Dendrites, her first novel, was awarded the EU Prize for Literature, shortlisted for the Anagnostis Best Novel Award, and won the Clepsidra Best Young Author Prize.

KAREN EMMERICH is a translator of modern Greek literature and an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. Her translation awards include the National Translation Award for Ersi Sotiropoulos's What's Left of the Night, the Best Translated Book Award for Eleni Vakalo's Beyond Lyricism, and the PEN Poetry in Translation Award for Yannis Ritsos's Diaries of Exile (co-translated with Edmund Keeley). She lives in Brooklyn.