With the People from the Bridge

Poena Damni #2

by Dimitris Lyacos, Shorsha Sullivan (Translator)

Acclaimed by critics worldwide, With the People from the Bridge is a unique distillation of literary genres, an all-in-one densely layered poem, play, postmodern epic, a small-scale wide-scope apocalyptic tragedy. An immersive experience where voices issue from characters in a state of trance, drift crackling out of a TV set or a cassette player and the contours of reality begin to darkle and shift while trains still pass up overhead, audience members get up to leave, performers creep out through back-exits. This is the day and the place for the imminent return of the dead and the reader sees them approaching as he peeks through the gaps of Lyacos's elliptical storytelling.

Radical in its recasting of content and narrative form this is one of those rare books that unravel visions of wholeness and collective redemption within the darkest aspects of our folk and religious tradition. Perhaps the dead can rise again. Perhaps the world is ending only to begin afresh.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction

46 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 19, 2014

About the author

Dimitris Lyacos (Greek: Δημήτρης Λυάκος) is a Greek writer best known for the internationally acclaimed Poena Damni trilogy and its prequel Until the Victim Becomes our Own. His genre-defying work interweaves prose, poetry, and drama with themes from philosophy, religion, ritual, and literary tradition, forming a complex narrative rooted in the Western Canon. Lyacos's characters are typically isolated, existential figures navigating dystopian or metaphysical landscapes, reflecting motifs such as the scapegoat, exile, redemption, and the return of the dead.
The trilogy, written over three decades, includes Z213: Exit, With the People from the Bridge, and The First Death, and has been interpreted as post-tragic and allegorical, blending Christian symbolism with elements of modernist and postmodernist literature. Critics have likened Lyacos to James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Cormac McCarthy, citing his synthesis of classical and contemporary styles. His work has been translated into over 20 languages, making it one of the most widely translated Greek literary projects of the 21st century.
Born in Athens, Lyacos studied law and philosophy in Athens, Venice, and London, and now resides between Berlin and Athens. He has lectured worldwide and appeared in major international festivals. Poena Damni is frequently included in university curricula and has garnered significant critical attention. Although a Greek author, his works are published solely in translation. Lyacos is considered Greece’s foremost contemporary writer and a likely Nobel contender, praised for his contribution to postmodern literature and the philosophical exploration of human suffering and transcendence.

Reviews

[Norat · Rating 5 out of 5]

After having read the other two books of Lyacos’s trilogy I was very much looking forward to this. “With the people from the bridge” is the second in the Poena Damni” trilogy and it takes over from the point where the narrator figure in Z213: Exit boards once more on a train, gets to a place called Nichtovo and becomes a spectator in a sequence of dramatic monologues performed by a band of outcasts under a derelict bridge. Unlike the other books of the trilogy the imagery here is more elliptical than dense, eerie and mysterious as is Dreyer’s Vampyr, and equally radical in its recasting of the narrative form. The four characters’ accounts contribute fragmented narrations filling in a puzzle whose main theme is the return of the dead. There is a unique way of approaching the vampire legend, with religious undertones and elements from death rituals combining to give the impression of a haunting, partly faded fresco that the reader is called in to decipher.

[Aline · Rating 2 out of 5]

J'ai encore moins compris que le premier tome, que j'ai préféré finalement. Tout n'est pas clair de ce monde post-apocalyptique fait de fuite, d'enfermement, de soif, de morts, de dieu, de hauteur et de profondeur. Le cauchemar continue, toujours les mêmes rêves hallucinés, la même soif de vie et de liberté (je ne suis pas certaine là)...
Je n'ai pas aimé et je ne pense pas en garder un souvenir impérissable. Malgré tout c'était intéressant par la forme et l'unicité de l'écriture. Mais qu'est-ce j'ai lu là ? Je ne sais pas.

[George]

Like the first volume in this trilogy, every other page is blank, but I don't think there'd be much of a difference if every single page were blank.

[Seb · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Don't look behind. Move ahead. It is ahead of you, it will come. Your own day will come, the door will open for you."

Reenactment of the first book from another perspective. The story does get a bit clearer than the first book. I think 🤔

"But it's like, it's like digging the sea and the more you dig the more you upset them."

[Δημητρης Μιχαλοπουλος · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read all Lyacos's books and i cannot really say which is best. This one is the hardest to place as far as genre is concerned: ritual, theatre, poetry, epic, are all seamlessly joined together in a haunting voyage of a contemporary, antiheroic Orpheus pointing to collective redemption. Masterfully, sparingly written. The feel of it accompanies you long after you have put it back on the shelf.

[Eli · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mesmerising love-to-death story, an unconventional play set among car debris, the smell of burned rubber, the sound of distant trains, and yet redemptive in a very uncommon way. I just finished it but I will certainly read it again.

[Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

really interesting! maybe a bit too postmodern for my taste though (3 stars)

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes the hidden or "philosophical" meaning of a book turns out to be shallow, the process of discovery being much more interesting than the discovery itself. Not so here. I found this was one of the most engaging works on "the return of the dead" theme, and a ground-breaking piece of poetic theater at the same time. A must read.

[Mallory Smart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dimitris Lyacos transcends genre in this contemporary and plaintive approach to vampire mythology in the second installment of the Poena Damni Trilogy: With The People From The Bridge. This story takes us to a place called Nichtovo where we shadow the speaker from the first book, to a dilapidated bridge. Here, amongst rubble and debris, we witness the poetic narrative broken down into four parts–all vying to add something else to the modern vampire mythos....

See the rest of this review on Maudlin House

[John Trefry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a blind buy. A poem composed of stage directions more than images, and although its author is described as a "leading figure in contemporary avant-garde writing" on the dust jacket, (what does that even mean?), I don't feel like the work is truly taking advantage of its form or our contemporary situation. This could easily be excerpted from late Beckett.

The very last page is 5 stars, but I don't think Lyacos wrote it.

[Jaime Almansa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un poco más de sentido, y aún así… a ver la tercera.