One of the most significant Greek prose writers of the post-war generation, Antonis Samarakis, is credited with being the most widely translated Greek author after Nikos Kazantzakis, with his works being translated in over 30 languages. Often referred to as the Greek Kafka, he is one of the most widely read Greek writers, both in his native land and around the world.
Called “a real masterpiece” by novelist Graham Greene, and “a powerful work” by playwright Arthur Miller, Samarakis' novel To Lathos (The Flaw, 1965) was eerily prophetic of the military dictatorship that was shortly to be established in Greece. Translated into English by Peter Mansfield and Richard Burns in 1969, the novel deals with the fate of a suspect detained in an unspecified police state; a plan is devised to make him attempt to escape, thereby proving his guilt, or confess to his anti-state crimes under interrogation.The flaw is the plan's failure to allow for the human factor, the fellow-feeling that the interrogator develops for the suspect during their time together. Oppressed and oppressor come face to face with their deepest human feeling, locked in a game of psychological skill.
As the plot slowly unravels, so do its main players. Professor Roderick Beaton comments that "the flaw turns out to lie in innate human goodness, for which the "perfect" totalitaritan system had failed to allow [...] The reader comes away warmed by the imagination that could create these people, but not always convinced that the world can be so neatly divided between decent individuals and inhuman systems".
Part thriller and part political satire, The Flaw is as powerful today as it was when first published. It is the best-known work of Antonis Samarakis and has been translated into more than thirty languages. The novel was awarded the coveted prize of the Twelve in Greece in 1966 and the Grand Prix de la Littèrature Policière in France in 1970. It was also turned into a successful film by Peter Fleischmann in 1974.