At a time when crime dramas dominate global streaming platforms and murder mysteries remain among the most popular genres in the U.S. and beyond, Greek Armenian writer Petros Markaris has revolutionized the genre of contemporary Mediterranean crime fiction, infusing it with social and political realities.
Born and raised in a Hellenized family, Markaris’ (originally Bedros Markarian) Armenian origins, however, are tied to an old, forbidden love story that led generations of Markarians to lose touch with their Armenian heritage.
As the writer tells it, his paternal grandfather, who came from one of the renowned and wealthy Armenian families of the Ottoman Empire, falls in love with the niece of the family’s Greek cook. Despite his great-grandfather’s threat of disinheritance, he marries her, gets disinherited, finds a job, learns her language, and, as a revenge, vows to never speak Armenian again. This set of decisions would gradually push the Armenian story of Markarian generations aside.
A third-generation descendant of this lineage, Bedros Markarian was born in Istanbul in 1937 and attended Greek and Austrian schools there before moving to Austria to study economics. After returning to Athens in the mid-1960s, he adopted the pen name Petros Markaris and began writing plays and film scripts, including collaborations with the renowned filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos. He also wrote for the nationally acclaimed Greek TV series Anatomy of a Crime—initially a four-episode project that extended to three years thanks to his talent.
Internationally, however, he is best known for his Kostas Haritos crime novels, featuring a middle-class Greek policeman investigating everyday crimes tied to broader social and political issues. The novels have been translated into more than 20 languages and published from the U.K. to the U.S. and across Europe and Latin America.
A consummate translator in his own right, Markaris is also a specialist in Bertolt Brecht and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and has translated numerous works, including Goethe’s Faust, into Greek. For his contributions to literature and translation, he has received a great many awards, including the Goethe Medal and the Cross of the Order of Merit of Germany.
Today, in his late eighties, Markaris remains a full-time writer. In addition to his Haritos novels, he is working on his memoirs, which also bring his Armenian story to light.
In this exclusive interview with AGBU Magazine, the writer reflects on the complex nature of identity, the importance of the crime fiction genre in contemporary literature, and the challenges faced by writers from small nations.
I start a novel when I notice a political, social, or economic issue around me that bothers me. Then I create a crime around it while portraying the real issue in parallel. I never focus on problems that have already been solved.
Q: Mr. Markaris, thank you for this interview. Born into a Hellenized Greek-Armenian family in Istanbul and later living in Austria and Athens, how would you define your identity?
A: I would say that my identity is bound to a city rather than a country, and that I am an Istanbulite. I grew up in cosmopolitan Istanbul, which was shaped more by its minority communities than by the Turkish population itself. And when walking along İstiklal Street, the main avenue of Beyoglu, I would hear six languages at the same time: Turkish, Greek, Armenian, Sephardic Jewish, Italian, and French. I wouldn’t even turn to look at who was speaking, as this was simply everyday life in Istanbul. Today, of course, this has changed, but my connection to Istanbul is still alive, and that is how I understand and present myself.
Q: When did you first discover your love for literature, and what urged you to become a writer?
A: My early connection with literature began with Turkish literature, and I’ll tell you how. In 1942, when I was five, a wealth tax was imposed on Turkey’s minority communities, stripping all their property away, even furniture. I only remember the horror on my father’s face when he learned the amount he had to pay. He managed, but we had to move to our house on Heybeliada, the Princess Islands.
Commuting daily to the Austrian high school on the mainland and returning to the island, away from my friends, made me feel a deep loneliness; until one day I discovered a French bookstore with French and Turkish books. Not knowing French, I turned to Turkish books and began reading contemporary writers and poets. Later, when we returned to Istanbul, I discovered German and Greek bookstores and gradually expanded into those literatures.
What I could observe from these readings, was that both Greek and Turkish writers of the time often turned to literature as a way to address political issues that could not be openly discussed. Literature was a form of resistance for them, and its political dimension was very strong. On the other hand, German literature was different as it focused more on shared sense of guilt after the Second World War.
So, I should say that Turkish and Greek writers of the time played a crucial role in helping me understand how literature can engage with political realities and in shaping my path toward becoming a writer.
If Armenian literature lacks crime fiction, it is indeed a gap, but also an opportunity. Because crime fiction is a powerful means of telling what’s going on in the city.
Q: How important is the genre of crime fiction in contemporary literature? This would especially interest Armenian writers, as we have historically lacked such works compared to European literatures.
A: This is a very interesting question. People of my generation and even younger readers tend to associate crime fiction mainly with the British tradition—Agatha Christie, for example. At the same time, American crime fiction was developing along a different path, as were Mediterranean and more recently Scandinavian ones.
What unites many of these traditions is that they use crime not as an end in itself, but as a starting point for a broader social narrative. This is not new. It already appears in 19th-century literature.
From my perspective, I start a novel when I notice a political, social, or economic issue around me that bothers me. Then I create a crime around it while portraying the real issue in parallel. I never focus on problems that have already been solved.
Another element that is very important, especially in Mediterranean crime fiction, is the role of the city. Athens, for me, is central. The same is true for other contemporary writers: for Jean-Claude Izzo, it is Marseille or for Manuel Vázquez, it is Barcelona. In all these cases, the city is not just a setting, but a character—again a way of presenting and understanding social life.
So, if Armenian literature lacks crime fiction, it is indeed a gap, but also an opportunity. Because crime fiction is a powerful means of telling what’s going on in the city, and raises issues that are still emerging, while making readers ponder similar happenings in their surroundings and perhaps come up with their own solutions.
Q: What about your main character, Kostas Haritos? As you develop each new storyline, you also develop his family life. How did you create him?
A: It was my third year working on Anatomy of a Crime, and I was writing the respective script when I suddenly imagined a family of three next to my computer. They seemed like a typical lower middle-class Greek family, and my initial reaction was negative, as I felt I had already included enough such families in the series.
Yet, the man was persistent, and I couldn’t concentrate. One day I told myself, “If he tortures me so much, he must be either a policeman or a dentist” [he laughs.] So I chose the policeman as more relevant for crime stories and immediately came up with names for the family: Kostas Haritos, the policeman; Adriani, his wife and a housewife; and their only child, Katerina. That is how the character and his family were created and featured in my first novel, Late-Night News, partly drawn on my experience with journalism.
And I’m glad you asked about the family in my novels, which is essentially the novelty I brought to contemporary crime fiction. Especially in southern countries such as Italy, Spain, and in Latin America, where the role of family is central, the readers mostly identify with the family rather than the policeman. When signing books, they may say, “Adriani is exactly like my mother.” I’m happy to hear that, because Adriani is closely modeled on my own mother, particularly in how she would always challenge my father.
Similarly, when I create new characters, I rely on real people from my environment. For example, in my second novel Zone Defense, there is a meticulous character who is obsessed with keeping his surroundings clean. After I finished the chapter, I asked my sister to read it. She turned to her husband and laughed, saying, “Look, you made it into a novel.” I suppose that this novelty in crime fiction is what the public loved.
Q: What advice would you give to contemporary Armenian writers?
A: I will be honest with you. When you write in a small language, like Greek or Armenian, spoken by limited number of people, becoming internationally recognized depends not only on talent but also on luck. In my case, luck was decisive. A German lady loved my first novel, translated three chapters, and shared them with the Goethe Institute in Athens, which passed the translation to a publisher. They bought the rights, with the condition that if the first novel sold fewer than 500 copies, there would be no second. Fortunately, it sold well, allowing my work to continue abroad.
Then my Greek publisher, also a close friend, advised me to entrust my foreign rights to someone who could promote me internationally, otherwise I had little chance to enter foreign industry. That became a turning point.
So my advice is this: write about the society you live in as it changes and develops. But also remember that reaching an international audience requires translation, networks, and often a moment of luck.
