Palimpsest: A Novel - Before We Begin

Dear You—

Today is June 11. Exactly one year ago on this day, I wrote to you about my first novel Palimpsest, and you can click here to read that letter if you like. My first novel was published in a tiny print run by a lovely but small Australian publishing house. The novel did not get to travel very far, did not travel beyond Australia, beyond Sydney and Melbourne.

And I want it to start travelling! So, over the next few months, I’ll be sharing it here. At the end of that, I will make it a book again, with a new title and cover and send it off around the world.

But for now, I’ll share chapters in a serialised form. I will also talk about why this story was important to me (and still is!), what inspired me, and why I chose fiction to tell this story. Along the way, I’ll share how you can work with me (I’m a writing coach and creative guide), especially if you have a difficult personal story or obsession that you might like to explore in fiction, rather than personal essay or memoir.

Hope you’ll stay, and I hope you bring some friends along too.

I wrote Palimpsest to explore a personal obsession and a personal fear. I’m not sure how specific I want to be because it’s precisely this fictional distance that has kept me sane, and kept me safe. But here is what we put on the back cover:

Palimpsest is about high ideals and low obsessions, truth and identity, nationality and race; what we believe and what happens when belief degenerates into fanaticism.

I wanted to explore the experience and psychology of fanatical obsession with and belief in conspiracy theories. What psychological, social, cultural, racial and familial factors make some people prone to making up and believing conspiracy theories?

I felt that those who do and those who don’t all begin in the same place with the same desire: a desire to know, a need for truth, a longing for wisdom. Today, both of these types of people are at war, but - I emphasise - we all start in the same place, with the same longing.

I tried to write through my obsession with this theme in personal essay and memoir, as well as in probing reportage. But the more I immersed myself in the facts and the more I met and interviewed the real people whose stories I was obsessed and frightened by, the more frightened and sick I became. I kept stepping back from the project.

But at the same time, I couldn’t move forward with anything else. I had to find a way to write about this.

I have always found ways to tell stories without telling the whole truth. I don’t like to expose people; I don’t think I have the right to do that. When I worked as a journalist, I would write up interviews and send them to my interviewees before sending them to my editor. I wanted to make sure they were okay, that I’d captured the complexity of their story, that I’d gotten it right (and that they still liked me). I was interviewing jazz musicians and authors for entertainment and book pages, not political or criminal figures, but I was still told I was wrong to do that.

So - fiction. It seems odd to say, but you will understand that what I will now say is entirely true. I can be more honest with fiction than with fact.

Fiction offers imaginative ways of telling a story. Fiction can hold complexity in ways that facts (because of the true/false binary) can’t. Fiction can expand your view. Fiction can help you to change your mind.

I decided to explore this thematic obsession and fear in fiction. I stepped away from specific conspiracy theories and moved toward an exploration of this longing or enthusiasm for truth and knowledge. I invented a world and people who might help me with this project. I was living in Greece, and so I borrowed Greece. I knew myself, and so I borrowed parts of myself. And, the rest, I invented.

This is what I wrote in the Afterword:

I invented many things in this novel — I invented an ancient Greek philosopher. I invented an ancient Greek demigod. I invented a father and a daughter. I invented an entire story. And the more I invented, the closer I got to the truth. It seemed I was digging more than writing; excavating more than composing and all the while I discovered that the story I was writing - by virtue of being an invention, a type of spectacle exposed - it was this thing that was able to reveal what I wanted to see and learn and, finally, understand. In writing this novel I wanted to understand how the virtue of philosophy, of wanting to gain wisdom, could devolve into its opposite: ignorance, confusion, fanaticism.

If you like, you can hear me talk about my book at its launch held in my favourite Sydney bookstore, Gleebooks, back on the 17th April 2010. I tell a long and elaborate tale about the story and themes - I look back now and smile. Dear sweet Kathryn - you were so obsessed; you were beautiful in your obsession. 🤣🥰 What can we do but look back at your younger selves with love and compassion and gratitude (and maybe a little embarrassment too - I admit!)

And now, here is the rest of the book blurb:

When thirty-year-old philosopher and bereaved mother Kally Palamas must unexpectedly leave Coober Pedy to attend her estranged father’s funeral in Zelopolis, in Greece, all she really wants is to stay alone in her stagnant life.

In Zelopolis, Kally meets Ari Paleologos, who writes an account of her father Akindynos’s life and work, and Ari’s father, Thomas, who acts as her sometime guide and leads her through the village’s history, revealing some things and keeping other things hidden.

This begins the unravelling of the death and life of Akindynos, of the modern village and the ancient city, of the modern Greek’s obsession with the past, as well as of Kally’s own confrontation with her daughter’s death and of her rejection of philosophy.

And, so, let’s begin with some of the preliminary pages.

Here’s another Greek-Australian name to add to the list that has contributed a richer, deeper, darker strain to Australian writing over the past half-century.

— Kerryn Goldsworthy in The Sydney Morning Herald

The narration is colourful, reflective and strewn with deft touches of comedy and irony…assured and knowledgeable.

— Tom Petsinis author of The French Mathematician

…A pensive and learned novel

— The Age

Palimpsest is proudly postmodern…Koromilas is a thoughtful writer

— Susan Giorgioski in Australian Book Review

Koromilas does write beautifully

— Dominique Wilson in WET INK

For me

. . . The monster, fanaticism, still exists, and whoever seeks after the truth will run the risk of being persecuted.

— Voltaire

There is, even before this begins, the problem of the narrative1. Who to tell it? This is an easy enough problem to solve. The author may do the storytelling herself, or she may borrow some other voice, or entrust the story to a character. Authors solve such problems all the time otherwise stories would never get told. They solve them and having solved them they move on. But while there is intrigue here — there is a dead man — and a reliable character — the dead man’s daughter — the character is reluctant to narrate the story.

The author makes her decision. The daughter appears centre stage. But, she objects to the work she must do. She argues that she has lost the fierce curiosity requisite for telling a good story; that she’s lost the talent for unravelling. Let us assume, however, that the work has been done, that the daughter has been persuaded, that we have arrived at the beginning, and that she has begun.

There you are! We have begun.

Hi! Thanks for reading. Over the course of this serialisation, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the story, the writing, the themes, your own obsessions and explorations into forms and genres that can hold your stories.

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