Author(s): Irena Karafilly

Literature

Calliope Adham - young, strong-willed, and recently widowed - is schoolmistress in the village of Molyvos when Hitler's army invades Greece in 1941. Well read and linguistically gifted, she is promptly recruited by the Germans, who force her to act as their liaison officer. It is the beginning of a personal and national saga that will last well over thirty years. Calliope's wartime duties bring her into close contact with Lieutenant Lorenz Umbreit, the Wehrmacht officer in command of her village. Their improbable friendship blossoms despite Calliope's clandestine work for the Resistance, in a fishing village seething with dread and suspicion. Amid privation and death, the villagers' hostility finally erupts, but the bond between Calliope Adham and Lorenz Umbreit survives the Occupation, taking unforeseeable turns. Their complex, defiant relationship continues through several tumultuous decades, as Greece is ravaged by civil war, oppressed by military dictatorship, and finally liberated in the mid-1970s. The Captive Sun is a haunting, sumptuous novel, weaving the private and the historic into a vivid tapestry of Greek island life. At once informative and spellbinding, it chronicles the story of an extraordinary woman and her lifelong struggle against social and political tyranny.