I really wanted to like this book and it seemed (from reviews) that it would be a good fit for my reading preferences. Even the marvelous introduction led me to anticipate a great work. Alas, not so. The author patches together brief "interviews" from people who experienced the Greek Civil War. That, in and of itself, might not have been a bad idea. However, the work assumes for it's success that the reader has a firm grasp (in detail) of Greek history and geography. Lacking such familiarity, a reader is left with story after story ungrounded in any overarching structure. An unending and random cast of characters adds to the confusion. The style is little more than a word for word transcription of the witnesses' brief homespun observations.

If a potential reader had a firm and detailed familiarity with both Greek history and geography and a ton of patience, the book might make a worthwhile read. If one lacks those I would stick to the well-written and informative introduction. ( )

"A human life wasn't worth much then, that's how things were."

So remarks one of the characters -- unnamed -- in this novel of World War II and the Civil War in Greece. Set up in documentary form, the story is about a group of villages in the Peloponnese [southern Greece, a mountainous area] and the atrocities suffered by the locals at the hands of not only Germans but also at the hands of rebels [Communist and also a rival group to the real Resistance]. It consists of a series of dialogues between a couple of characters and also interviews conducted by someone unnamed [the author?] where personal stories are told at the distance of many years. Sometimes the same incident is told by several people so you get a different POV--a "Rashomon effect", if you will. Central to the story is burning of the village of Kastrí and how people are affected. Detention camps have been set up at various locations, the one most central to the narrative being at Orthokostá Monastery.

The unrelenting narration of torture [usually beating on the soles of the feet], how cruelly one group of Greeks could treat their own countrymen and how the villagers coped was depressing. The torture of Iraklís was especially horrendous. But the story did give me some insight into those turbulent times. I thought the translation very good. The language was casual but not slangy. I liked the idea of accenting each Greek proper name to make them easier to remember. A long introduction, essay, translator's note and explanation of unfamiliar terms to help non-Greeks understand the book were very helpful. ( )