The First Death

The First Death is a book by Dimitris Lyacos. It is the third part of the Poena Damni trilogy. The book is a fictional rendering of a poem that is translated by an inmate with the use of a dictionary he finds available in the library of the prison he is detained. The translated poem tells the story of a marooned man on a desert island in a sequence of fourteen sections, recounting his relentless struggle for survival as well as his physical and mental disintegration. The work alludes simultaneously to a modern Philoctetes, an inverted version of Crusoe as well as the myth of the dismemberment of Dionysus. The dense and nightmarish imagery of the poem, replete with sensations of hallucination, delirium, synesthesia, and putrefaction has drawn comparisons to Lautreamont, Trakl and Beckett. Despite being first in the publication history of the Poena Damni trilogy, The First Death is chronologically last in the narrative sequence.