Calliope is a young schoolmistress in the village of Molyvos when Hitler’s army invades Greece in 1941. Recruited by the Germans to act as their liaison officer, Calliope’s wartime duties bring her into close contact with Lieutenant Lorenz Umbreit, the Wehrmacht commander. In a fishing village seething with dread and suspicion, their intimacy begins to blossom. But as an active member of the Greek Resistance, how long can their relationship last?
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Extract
Part of the PROLOGUE
There were cats everywhere: on faded cushions and fraying rugs, on chairs and shelves and chests and tabletops. Cats blinking and swishing their tails, cats curled up in sleep, cats energetically licking each other’s fur. The moment she stepped into the hallway, the intense odour caught at Calliope’s throat. Zenovia the fortune teller was getting old and increasingly eccentric, living alone with her ever-growing feline tribe.
Her only son had died in the Balkan Wars; her philandering husband had long since fled to Salonika. Calliope had been a child when all this had happened, but the villagers had immortalised the scandal in an amusing ditty echoing the national anthem. Whenever Zenovia’s name was mentioned, someone was bound to recall the disgraced notary, though by the end of 1940, Molyviates were more interested in Zenovia’s clairvoyant gifts than in her marital past. Months earlier, she had publicly predicted an imminent war that would take village men away from home to battle a new enemy.
And this prophecy had come to pass. Calliope’s husband, Kimon Alexiou, had been among those drafted back in October to
fend off Mussolini’s advancing army. Not long after, the distraught Zenovia came down with acute pneumonia and was still recovering around Christmas when Calliope was charged with delivering a plate of her mother’s holiday cookies to her door.
It was a chilly December afternoon, with rain pelting the creaky Turkish shutters. Zenovia’s house was one of the oldest and grandest in the village, but her kitchen was shockingly chaotic, as cluttered as most kitchens might be only during a spring clean.
Thank you
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About the Author
Irena Karafilly is an award-winning writer and poet and the author of several acclaimed books as well as numerous stories, poems and articles published in both literary and mainstream magazines and newspapers including the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune. She was born in Russia, educated in Canada and currently divides her time between Montreal and Athens.
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Author Link
Website: https://irenakarafilly.com/
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Book Link
Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Arrested-Song-Irena-Karafilly-ebook/dp/B0B6QTKBX7/
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