To read Tango in Blue Nights is to circle stories that refuse to standalone in the mind’s eye. At the heart of Manousakis’ collection is a fixation upon moments-in-time—time past, absent-presences—embodied moments, past and ever-present.

The brevity of short-form writing makes it an apt vessel for capturing the haunting incompleteness of human experience. Individually and collectively, Manousakis’ stories are deeply associative, concentric worlds focalised through highly idiosyncratic focalising registers.

Tango in Blue Nights calls us to question the impact of moments-in-time on our personhood. The authorial consciousnesses lurks in shadow, at a centre point—binding diverse voices and story worlds through an empathic authorial register, intertwining the rich matter of experience with a sure hand.

How is it that stories can enter our affect cycle as if they were lived experience? Manousakis’ stories respond to this question through immersive acts of storytelling—evoking emotion, tension and drama with an energy reminiscent of the short story cycle. As the stories in Tango in Blue Nights become inextricably woven in the reader’s mind, these works of flash fiction transform—a cacophony of voices, acutely realised, held at intimate arm’s length.

Manousakis is a storyteller orbiting moments-in-time with the energy of Pilar dancing the tango—close embraces, deft footwork, and then gone, abandoning us, ‘like those who teach [us that we] exist’.


Dr Julia Prendergast (she/her)
Associate Professor
Discipline Leader: Creative Writing, Literature and Publishing
School of Social Sciences, Media, Film and Education
Swinburne University