Brian Hamnett

The House in Zanthos Brian Hamnett

War and Civil War tear apart the generation of the 1940s, shattering families but sustaining loyalties. We follow the Creighton and Kazanis families from defeat in Greece and the flight from Crete, through the war in Egypt and Libya in the Western Desert, and thence into the Greek Civil War. Ancient civilisations lie in ruins around them, as the new civilisations destroy each other. The generation of the 1960s, for their part, will discover how brittle their desire for liberation can become. When they look back at their predecessors, they wonder whether the two different generations ever be able to understand one another.

In 1960, this is the dilemma of Sylvia Creighton, student of the Ancient World, and her new friend, Alexander Kazanis, sceptical of those Classical ideals, who meet for the first time at their fathers' house in Zanthos, on the Greek coast. Sylvia rapidly finds that she is out of her depth in the world of Modern Greece. Even so, Greece is as beautiful and enticing for her as it had been for her father in the 1940s. The vicious military coup in 1967, however, shatters the dreams of the younger generation, and Greece becomes a prison.

Personal and political relationships overlap and conflict. The scene moves from Zanthos to Athens and Northern Greece. There, and in Paris and London, Sylvia and Alex learn of love and survival in times of strife. Yet, many secrets will remain undiscovered.