Product Description

In 1948, in a Greek mountain village, Eleni Gatzoyiannis was arrested, tortured and shot. She was one of the 158,000 victims of the Greek Civil War. Her crime had been to help her children escape from the Communist guerrillas who occupied their village. Her son, Nicholas Gage, was then eight years old. Eleni is the story of his obsessive and harrowing reconstruction of his mother's life and death and his pursuit of his mother's killer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19105 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 640 pages

From the Publisher
‘Not only a son’s poignant memorial to his dead mother but an important work of history’ Observer

About the Author
Nicholas Gage was born in Green and emigrated to the United States ten years later. He was an investigative reporter and foreign correspondent for the New York Times when he wrote Eleni, working as their bureau chief in Athens. It was published in 1983 and went on to win the Royal Society for Literature's Heinemann Award for the best book of the year in 1984. Eleni became a bestseller all over the world and was made into a feature film.

Customer Reviews

A beautiful story of a mother's love for her children
This is a truely great book. It tells a gripping and often harrowing story of a mother determined to protect her children from the ravages of the Greek civil War at all costs and ultimately her own life. This is a book I have read 3 times and it doesn't get any easier to read how Eleni was brutally tortured and murdered by her own people, just for the crime of protecting her children. Eleni conducted her life with love and dignity, she shows compassion for her neighbours and a willingness to forgive that is astounding. People she had known all of her life betray her through fear. This book teaches us the reality of life and death for the people of Greece through the Greek Civil War. However it is also a positive story of triumph over adversity. I highly recommend this book - you can't help but love every minute of it. It is an emotional rollercoaster from start to finish but definitely a book you will not want to put down.
Nick Gage - how hard it must have been to re-live these memories, but I thank you for sharing your story. This is simply my favourite book of all time! There is also a DVD of the story, which although good - it cannot live up to this truely wonderful, emotional book.

A stark account of mans' inhumanity and the power of love
This is an extraodinary book. The tragedy is that it is a story which needed to be told at all. It is a terrible and true account of what happens when ideology (of any persuasion) subsumes our sense of our own and each other's humanity. Though the events took place in Greece during the German occupation, and afterwards during the Greek civil war, it would be dangerous to assume that there aren't lessons here for us all, of whatever political, religious or cultural orientation. Although the story is particular to Greece during the Second World War and its aftermath, it is sadly a story which could have been told many times, with reference to different historical and geographical locations. We keep forgetting how often this story could have been told - how often it is being replayed in different parts of the world today, and how often it may be repeated in the future.

I found myself shaken at the awful story Nicholas Gage had to tell, the terrible events his family experienced, and also so grateful that he did tell this tragic and also wonderful story. Like Wild Swans this is a book which sickens you with the realisation that any one of us, given the right (or wrong) situation might forget our common humanity so easily, and yet also serves as a wonderful testimonial to the existance of something deep, true and heroic in many ordinary people, that enables us sometimes to transcend the ego driven cruel way we can treat each other. Eleni's story is stark, tragic and bleak - but also shows the illuminating and transcending power of love, compassion and and truth.

a harrowing tale of the best and the worst in human nature
This remarkable book tells the true story of the last years in the life of Eleni Gatzoyiannis, a peasant woman living in a mountain village of Greece before she was executed by communist guerillas during the civil war that followed the country's liberation from german occupation after WWII.
In an attempt to uncover the reasons for his mother's death, the author puts together a vivid account of everyday life in one of Greece's poor mountain villages, the experience of german occupation, and the nightmares of the civil war as well as the events that led to his mothers death. The book is written like a novel -based on information from eyewitnesses, relatives and other contemporaries of Eleni- and is riveting as such, although clearly not important literature. The narrative is embellished by brief notes on the historical facts of the greek civil war as a backdrop to the unfolding story. Unfortunately, these notes suffer from a -perhaps understandable- lack of objectivity: by failing to mention the atrocities committed by extreme-right paramilitaries all over Greece before and during the civil war, the author omits a dimension of the war that is perhaps as important as the ideological fanaticism of the communist guerillas.
Why would I recommend this book to anyone who is not interested in a theme related to a small nation's recent history? For two reasons: Firstly, the book provides a thorough anatomy of society in a secluded, poor mountain village in the southern Balkans. Gage's depiction is likely to be interesting not just to social historians and anthropologists, but to any reader with general interests. Secondly, and most importantly, the book is about universal themes that reach deep into the human psyche: the boundless barbarism man is capable of, the dangers of ideology when not reigned in by reason and sensibility, the pettiness and cruelty of people towards others when faced with danger and, finally, the great force of maternal love.
A gripping and uneasy read.