The Lembrakis Story

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32020, 21 June 1969, Page 4

The Lembrakis Story

“Z.” By Vassilis VassHiko*. MacDonald. 406 pp.

This book has been translated from Greek by Marilyn Calmann. It was first published in Greece at the end of 1966 and has been banned there since early in 1967. It is based upon the story of the assassination of Lambrakis at whose funeral 400,000 people stood in silent grief. The title, “Z,” stands for the Greek word “zei”—“he lives!” It tells in the form of fiction what the author has found out in sifting fact from the widespread legends about the life and death of Lambrakis, who in the story becomes Z, a member of the House of Deputies who goes to address a peace rally in Salonica and is there murdered in a riot fomented for that very purpose by the local Chief of Police, by a neo-fascist gang led by a former collaborator called Autocratosaur, and by other local riff-raff. The actual murderers were two hoodlums named Yango and Vango who killed the Deputy by running him over with a small delivery van operated by Yango. The crime, carefully planned by the authorities, might have been put down to a hit and run accident, had it not been for a middleaged man, named Hatzis, who jumped on to the fleeing van and prevented its escape. Because of widespread popular outcry, fanned by a reverence for the victim (now a martyr), Hatzis’s jump led to a judicial enquiry which was entrusted to a young lawyer from the Department of Justice, known as the Investigator. This honest, painstaking,

and intelligent man receives some help from an Athens journalist named Andoniou, but mainly is subjected to delays and frustrations from almost everyone else. The author has given us a deeply impressive and horrifying book, written expertly with great power. The main story rolls along fascinatingly and inevitably: the various lights and kaleidoscopic patterns it throws on the various characters and groups concerned at each turn of the wheel are vividly memorable.