ΛεμονοδάσοζDiary Novel or Diary Fiction?

Kosmas Politis's first novel, Λεμονοδάσοζ (The Lemon Grove, 1930), begins like a diary novel. It purports to be the diary of the main character, Pavlos Apostolou, who decides to start writing a diary because he needs to "see" his thoughts laid out on paper. But soon this narrative proves to be something totally different from other diary novels of the period. Apostolou's narrative overturns all the well-known conventions of the diary novel and plays with other literary forms. By using the present tense for narrating past events, the diary suggests that writing itself is the actual event. Breaking the logic of this literary form, Lemonodhásos eventually moves away from the diary novel—through the autobiographical novel and the monologue text—toward a modernistic form of diary fiction.