In 2008 Antigone Perifanis returns to her old family home in Athens after 60 years in exile. She has come to attend the funeral of her only son, Nikitas, who was born in prison, and whom she has not seen since she left him as a baby. Nikitas had been distressed in the days before his death and, curious to find out why, his English widow Maud starts to investigate his complicated past.
Reviews
By Catherine Taylor, 31 MAR 2012

“A fiercely absorbing and passionate book”

By Lettie Ransley, 04 MAR 2012

“Sofka Zinovieff’s debut novel is an engrossing saga of a family riven by ideological conflict and fractured by war….”Zinovieff’s historical gaze is scrupulously fair and does not shirk from uncomfortable truths.”

31 MAR 2012

“An arresting, finely woven first novel… With its breadth of historical detail, this novel offers compelling insight into the pathologies that Greeks still bring to their relations with outsiders.”

By Genevieve Fox, 05 APR 2012

“A thought-provoking, moving novel.”

By Joseph Charlton, 03 APR 2012

“An ambitious mixture of family drama, social anthropology and historical enquiry.” A “broad and enriching story.”

By Vangelis Provias, 12 AUG 2012

“Zinovieff loves Greece – and I believe that many Greeks will love Zinovieff when they read her book.”

By Achilleas Paparsenos, 08 JUL 2012

“Scenes from the [Nazi] occupation, the resistance, the prisons and exiles, the dilemmas of the era, the role of the British, the consequences of the Civil War, the connection of one generation with the next and the problems of today’s youth… the author’s penetrating perspective keeps the reader’s interest undiminished until the end.”

By Linda Funnell, 19 JUN 2012

The House on Paradise Street is a moving story of a family, of the brutal toll of history and of the spark of political engagement that offers promise as well as peril. It is a fascinating human story and one that provides a valuable window into contemporary Greece.”

By Fleur Fisher , 21 MAY 2012

“It’s a big story, full of history, full of humanity, full of change, and yet it is always lucid, always compelling. It gave me some understanding of what it might be live through occupation and civil war, how families can be torn about, how so much can be lost, how the past inevitably shapes the present… And it brought Greece to life: the food, the streets, the climate, the communities, the politics… It is the characters that make the story sing: intriguing, fallible, utterly believable human beings.”

By Paddy Kehoe, 21 MAY 2012

“Athens-based writer Sofka Zinovieff explores the tragic rupture in a Greek family, as two sisters, Alexandra and Antigone become alienated under the Nazis.”

By Sue Magee, 01 MAR 2012

“A death in the 21st century reignites a sixty-year-old family feud. It’s a good story and will also give the reader a lot to think about in terms of how Greece is now. Recommended.”

By Katerina Mpakogianni, 22 MAY 2012

“Mία ζοφερή υπενθύμιση για την κακομεταχείριση των Ελλήνων αριστερών μετά το τέλος του δευτέρου παγκοσμίου πολέμου και για τις καταστροφικές συνέπειες στο υπόλοιπο του 20ού αιώνα για την Ελλάδα.”

By Lettie Ransley, 04 MAR 2012

“The House on Paradise Street is set in Athens, where an English-born researcher, Maud Perifanis, lives with her journalist husband, Nikitas, their teenage daughter Tig and stepson, Orestes, in an apartment above the childhood home of Nikitas’s aunt, Alexandra. When Nikitas died in a car crash in 2008, Maud contacted his mother, Antigone, who left him behind as a child for life in Soviet Russia. Her return to Athens, and the yielding of long-held secrets, forms the other half of a dual narrative.”

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