The fraught events in the Balkans leading to the occupation of Greece by the Nazis in April, 1941, form the structure of this complex novel, which begins in Greece and ranges through Albania, France, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Turkey, as small, vulnerable Eastern European countries try to stave off both the Nazis and the Italians. Alan Furst, famous for his carefully researched espionage thrillers focusing on events from 1940 and 1941, recreates the confusions and the complications of the Balkan countries in early 1941, as they try to maintain some semblance of sovereignty against the massive war machine of Nazi Germany. With their different political systems, languages, and cultural sensibilities, their best chance for individual survival lies not within their own, often impotent, governments but within a loosely connected group of individuals from many European countries who may have access to information. Exhibiting little sense of trust of each other, some are associated with police and intelligence agencies, while others are committed private citizens who want to help the Jews escape the onslaught of the Reich. All want to stop Hitler, but all also have separate, private goals.
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Dimitrios Avgoustis, now seventy-five, has been a seaman in the Greek merchant marine for 58 years, a captain for much of that time, well respected by his crew. He is less respected by his family, however, especially by his less than steadfast wife Flora, an embittered, angry woman who was going to separate from him before she became pregnant with their son Andonis. Dimitrios, known to various acquaintances as Mitsos or Mimi, has not seen his family for years, has two daughters who hate him, a five-year-old granddaughter he has never seen, and a twenty-two year-old son who desperately wants a father but has never known him. Mitsos has not written a letter home or looked at any photographs of his family in years. “I love my family but from a distance of ten thousand miles,” he says, and for the last ten years, he has remained rooted to his ship, not even going ashore when the ship lands in port. Now it is time for Mitsos to retire, though he is unwilling to do so.
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Those who grew up on the poetic translations of the Odyssey by Robert Fitzgerald and Richmond Lattimore will be surprised, to say the least, at this new version of the “lost books” of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason. Both of those earlier translator/poets treat this epic as the monument of Greek culture that it is–a long poem from three thousand years ago intended to be sung by traveling bards as a way of preserving their culture and religion. Mason’s newly published version of this story, by contrast, takes a post-modernist approach–casual, playful, earthy, and even scatological. Using the traditional story of the Odyssey as his starting point, Mason gives his own take on various episodes from that epic, jumping around in time and place, changing major aspects of the story, adding new episodes, and providing unique points of view.
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Mary Renault’s great historical novel of Theseus begins when he is a young man in Troizen, a well-bred youth who has never known his father’s identity. When, with the help of the gods, he succeeds in lifting a stone to reclaim his father’s sword, Theseus discovers that he is the son of Aigeus, King of Athens. On his way to Athens to meet him, Theseus arrives in Eleusis, where after wrestling the king in a fight to the death, he finds himself, unexpectedly, the King of Eleusis. Renault tells the story of Theseus as if Theseus were a real person, not a mythical character, using history, archaeology, and a deep understanding of the cultures of the period to place Theseus in a realistic context. Her descriptions of the lifting of the stone, the wrestling match in Eleusis, Theseus’s arrival at the palace in Athens, and especially his experiences in becoming a bull dancer bring the period vibrantly to life in ways consistent with the historical record.
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Winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1995, Corelli’s Mandolin follows for sixty years the life of Pelagia and those who love her, beginning in World War II, when she and her father, a doctor on the small Greek island of Cephalonia, first get drawn into the war. Attractive and intelligent, Pelagia thinks herself in love with Mandras, an illiterate Greek fisherman who leaves for war. When the island is overtaken by the ineffectual Italian army, Captain Antonio Corelli is billeted in their small house. Corelli, whose response to “Heil, Hitler” was once “Heil, Puccini,” is a musician, a mandolin player, who quickly establishes a singing group (meeting in the company’s latrines) in preference to waging war. By the time the wounded Mandras returns, Pelagia and Corelli are in love.
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