Gjak - Dimosthenis Papamarkos;Siân Valvis

A modern classic from Greece, now in English for the first time. 

Greece, a hundred years ago: in the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War, young men return from the battlefield, forever changed by what they have seen and done. They come home seeking revenge or forgiveness; all of them grieving. They might have survived the war, but peace does not come easily. The men are marked. These are their stories.

Hailed as the most important Greek novel of the twenty-first century, Gjak unfolds in an unnamed Arvanite village – a closed rural community governed by its own codes of honour. Binding each soldier’s story is the red thread of gjak itself: an Arvanitic word meaning blood, bloodline, blood feud, and nation. With this thread, these interconnected tales are woven into one powerful, haunting portrait of a world in violent transition.