Sti Skia Tis Petaloudas (In the Shade of the Butterfly / Στη σκιά της πεταλούδας

GREEK LANGUAGE BOOK
This is a novel about the greater area of northern Greece told through the chronicle of two families covering three generations. This family saga speaks of east Romylia and Andrianoupolis in the late 19th century and of the burning of villages during the racist rivalries in Macedonia from that time to contemporary Thessaloniki; of Velvedo, Kozani, the forests of Vermio and the Pieria Mountains; the landscapes of Western Macedonia, wanderings down to the borders of the Thessalian Plains; of fugitives and fortune hunters in the "New Land" and old Greece; the Balkan Wars, the exchange of populations and refugees; the sweat and the passions, everything draining out in a man's and a woman's love for each other in present time, when they meet during an August heat wave under strange, nightmarish circumstances… The book is a torrential flow about the struggle for survival and an elegy of the wasted love and of the passing of time. It is also an extensive novel about the city of Thessaloniki. Through its scarred skin, the author reconstitutes the landscapes of its micro-history: the promenades of Venizelian society, through the charred ruins of the big fire of '17, the reception of refugees and the period between the two wars, the Movement of '35, the dictatorship, the bombings during the Greek-Italian war, the German Occupation, the warfare in the towns, the extermination of the Jewish community, the Civil War's wretched prisoners as they travel on Egnatia Road, ending in the petit bourgeois freeze of the 50's and 60's and the anxious search for the meaning of a new age. Walks, buildings, streets, haunts, back alleys, the country and the suburbs, everything is as real as the etched skin of the old city.