Eleni (first published 1983)
Nicholas Gage
This book is really two stories
combined: the life and death of Eleni Gatzoyiannis, a Greek peasant woman, and
the quest of her son Nicholas for truth and justice thirty years later.
Eleni was tortured, condemned to
death and killed by the Greek Communist rebels who were occupying and
controlling her mountain village.
In writing the book, Nicholas
identifies with his mother and brings her life as vividly before us as if the
book had been written by Eleni herself. His account of her life and character
is detailed and convincing.
It is a tough book to read, and
hard to recommend, as one suffers a lot in reading it. But one also learns an
enormous amount. In the first place, about Greece in the mid-twentieth century.
Secondly, about Communism, an idealism which, because it is totalitarian,
necessarily includes the torture and murder of anyone who does not cooperate
whole-heartedly – and, indeed, of plenty who do.
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