More Than Two

＂＂This two-part book tells two entirely different but interlocking stories of several modern characters in modern situations (Hollywood, New York, Dublin, Greece, London) with two sets of couples and two sets of twins, all of whose reliability is questionable when faced with attempts to tell their autobiographies. The book transgresses many conventional boundaries usually found in even the most ＂post-modern＂ fiction. It will remind some readers of the works of Graham Greene and John le Carré, as well as a touch here and there of Evelyn Waugh and a hint of P.G. Wodehouse. Esposito’s finely drawn characters populate a series of often very funny situations, swerving from the deadly serious to the absurd in unorthodox fashion.＂＂ - Brewster Chamberlin, author of Radovic’s Dilemma. In 600 BC the Cretan philosopher Epimenides of Knossos asserted that ＂All Cretans are liars.＂ If he was telling the truth, he was lying; if he was lying, he was telling the truth. Epimenides was asking us to accept two contradictory statements as simultaneously valid. More Than Two tries to prove his case. As René Magritte might have said, ＂Ceci n’est pas un roman.＂ But is it a novel? Perhaps, in the light of the two protagonists’ fate, it is un grec. It tests, in two contradictory stories, the truth of fiction. It questions the nature of authenticity. It provokes issues such as authorial presence and the reliability of narrative. It explores the relationship between fact and fiction, and between memory and imagination. It can be read as a parody or as an authentic narrative, depending upon the reader’s starting point. It invites the reader into self-reflection as a form of confession. It is a palindrome. The author is a Cretan. James Esposito did not write this book.

James Esposito was born in Castellammare, near Naples, in 1950, and educated at the universities of Dublin and Oxford. He spent his professional life as a lecturer in film and drama at Leeds University before retiring to Greece. He is the author of Book Into Film and George Eliot on Screen. This is his first novel. He is married to the critic Aleksandra Demidenko. They have twin children