How is play constituent in the formation of the Greek modernist novel? Reflecting competition with European and North American models as well as internal antagonism with more established literary genres in Greece, the novel after the 1930s employed playfulness as a means to demonstrate or even perform its novelty

Introduction 1. Beyond Textual Aesthetics: Modalities of Play in Fiction 2. No Importance in Being Earnest? Playfulness and Greek Modernism in the 1930s 3. Intertextuality as Reading Performance: Playful Citation in Yannis Skarimbas's Mariambas 4. The Archaeologies of Reading: From Drosinis's Classical Canon to Pentzikis's Intertextual Games 5. Games and Symbolic Order in Aris Alexandrou's the Mission Box 6. Replaying the Text in Stratis Tsirkas's Drifting Cities 7. The Heart of Lightness: Trivial Colonialism in Nikos Kachtitsis's the Balcony