Title: Giorgi’s Greek Tragedy
Author: Pauline Hager
Author’s website: www.ilovetoreadbooks.comGenre: Historical –Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-7414-6034-9
Reviewed by Cindy Taylor originally for AllBooksReviewInt.com
To take a period in history and weave it into a fictional account of the survival of a family through three generations of their struggles and successes and still create an interesting and exciting page- turner is not an easy feat. However, to Pauline Hager it is like second nature in Giorgi's Greek Tragedy as she tells us the story of Giorgi Papakalos and his family and their lives in the beautiful mountains of the Peloponnese region of The story centres on the Papakalos and Leonidis families as they struggle to raise their families by strict Greek tradition during turbulent times. They all work incredibly long hours in the fields to be able to save a little money even after paying heavy taxes to the Turks. Even when Mother Nature wreaks havoc on their crops or Turkish officials kill one of their own, they still endure and carry on through their intense pain and suffering and find some measure of contentment in their everyday lives. After finding his parents murdered by Turkish scouts who take his older brother away to be trained for the Janissary Corps, Giorgi Papakalos vows to join the freedom fighters, known as kleftes, to fight for the freedom of his people and to avenge his parents´ deaths. Giorgi's brother, Yianni, joins Giorgi on his adventures, and we follow them as they endure severe hardships training as kleftes and grow into two very different personalities, but still with the common dream of freedom and an intense dedication to and love for each other. | Hager takes the themes of struggle and survival and challenges us to consider the struggles that all groups of people go through to differing degrees and to ponder where human beings get the undying will to survive. What keeps people fighting even when up against the greatest adversities? It also gave me great admiration and respect for the tenacity of these strong, resilient and yet impoverished and downtrodden Greek people who toiled and endured every day in the fields just for basic survival and gained great satisfaction from their accomplishments, no matter how small. Through it all they never gave up on their dream of independence and still managed to live by ancient Greek traditions and raise loving and moral families. Hager is a very gifted writer, creating rich and memorable characters who we never stop rooting for throughout the story. We watch their patience and dedication to their traditions and their cause and want them to achieve their goal of freedom from the Turks. Hager is skilled at making the reader experience the whole gamut of emotions from anger when the Turks kill innocent Greek peasants, frustration when everything seems futile, happiness when something goes right, guilt, shock, heartbreak and anticipation of freedom near the end. When The Great Powers of Europe finally pressure the Sultan into recognizing Another aspect of this book that I found invaluable considering the vast cast of characters was the list of characters grouped by family, the map of I am extremely impressed by this first novel from Pauline Hager, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys epic historical novels. You will not be disappointed, and I personally look forward to Hager's future work. |
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