Then again, when: Two books by Cypriot author Christos R. Tsiailis

UGGA: Spinal Historicisms (2025, 85 pages) and Klotho Surfaces (2016, 550 pages) by Christos R. Tsiailis

Maureen Korp

Recently, the Parnassos Hellenic Cultural Society of Ottawa and the High Commission of the Republic of Cyprus in Canada hosted an evening at the Hellenic Event Centre to celebrate the work of Christos R. Tsiailis, a Cypriot author new to some of us that evening, myself included.

Tsiailis, an engaging presenter, is an internationally published novelist, playwright, and poet with nine books in print. I am delighted to have the opportunity to review two for IMAGE. Both are wondrous treks through what was or may have been, and what is, or did it end already?

UGGA: Spinal Historicisms, (2025, 85 pages) is an epic poem, presented as a small book of linked, time-placed verses. Klotho Surfaces, (2016, 550 pages), a hefty, enthralling historical-scientific-fantasy, is Volume I of the Omniconstants Trilogy.

We begin with Klotho Surfaces: Klotho, Klotho, where are you? What are you? Klotho is a gene, one found in each of us. Its anti-aging properties, the “secret of life,” comprise the raison d’ȇtre of this story.

Klotho Surfaces is a tale told and retold from different points of view throughout a fifty-year period. The story begins in Athens, 2045 – 46; then sidles back to Rome, 1996, and Dallas, Texas, 2015, before heading underground, returning to Athens, 2046.

Many are the people met, lost, and found again along the way. Not all are fictional creations. The novel’s acknowledgements note that this story has been written “with the permission and blessing of the eminent Dr. Makoto Kouro-o, inventor of the Klotho solvent.” This is the Japanese scientist who discovered Klotho. In Tsiailis’s novel, he is a key player.

Klotho Surfaces gathers tales aplenty into narrative webs of social control and lived realities. We read of the 2011 Japanese tsunami, as well as the Illuminati, Freemasons, and a good many machinations of the Order of the Amaranth. Might World War III be now underway?

Physical locations are vividly, accurately described: Lycabettus Hill in downtown Athens is one important site, the Bank of America in Charlotte, North Carolina, another. Why? In its lobby is a fresco known to be encoded with Masonic data.

Many factors are at play in Klotho Surfaces. How many times can we die? Who is to say one is dead?

The book’s cover is a photograph of two figures in a scary tunnel. Were the Diefenbunker to have a graffiti make-over, this scene would be a mere half-hour’s drive away from Ottawa. (Note: The Diefenbunker was secretly built in 1959 – 61 as a hideaway for Canada’s key political and military personnel in case of a nuclear attack. Today, it is Canada’s Cold War Museum, open to all.)

Klotho Surfaces whispers secrets to the reader. There is a love story, too. Will the lovers, Jordan Dabelmort and Roxanne Fell, remember what matters? What about Lilith? Volume I opens the door to Volume II. May it soon be published.

UGGA: Spinal Historicisms, a small book, is a hopeful meditation, an epic poem presented as an elegant sequence of numbered verses, one to a page. What matters is the whole and how the story is told. It is sequential—past, present, near future.

UGGA’s spatial compositions enable the reader to enter into thought lines, spinal constructions. What is seen can be remembered.

The first verses of the poem, a section numbered inversely from 30 to one, take us into the long ago. Here, language begins: “Ugga, ugga,” Denisovans, Mitochondrial Eves, Homo Sapiens all making their way, somewhere, at the outset. After all, “the ice pushes you to emigrate.”

In the midsection of the poem, numbering shifts to a progression, zero to 17. Why? A time shift into the present, “Zero, the borderline of Time.” Subsequent verses warn of Bluetooth as “we hide in the QR code,” avoiding the Great Digitalis. But there can be something else. Between “downloading” and “zero,” there can be a “fluttering… truth.” The near future forms the concluding section. Its verses, numbered one to 30, are truths told simply.

Do not forget. Our first ancestral sounds were “UGGA, ugga.” There is always tomorrow.