My Last Lament

Now in paperback, the poignant and evocative novel of one Greek woman's epic struggle to tell the story of her own past and her nation's history in the aftermath of World War II.

To capture the fading Greek folk art of lamenting, an American researcher asks the aging Aliki to record her dirges, but in response, Aliki sings her own story...

It begins in a village in northeast Greece, where Aliki witnesses the occupying Nazi soldiers execute her father for stealing squash. And when the soldiers torch the village and massacre its people just as the war is ending, Aliki; her friend Takis; and Stelios, the son of a Jewish refugee, are able to escape.

Fleeing across the chaotic landscape of a postwar Greece, Aliki, Takis, and Stelios become a makeshift family. They're bound by friendship and grief, but betrayal, madness, and heartbreak will tear them apart.