http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/30/first-novels-roundup-review?newsfeed=true Zinovieff’s intense, multi-generational story covers 70 years of Greek history. When charismatic journalist Nikitas Perifanis dies suddenly, his third wife, English Maud, is bewildered by the circumstances. The answer lies in the complex relationships and conflicted alliances within the high-ranking Perifanis family, stretching back to the German occupation of the second world war and
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/04/house-paradise-street-sofka-zinovieff-review When Nikitas Perifanis is killed in a car crash in Athens, his English wife, Maud, tracks down the mother, Antigone, who had left him as a three-year-old. Antigone returns to Greece too late for her son, but in time to attempt a reconciliation with her family and her past: from youthful rebellion under the Nazi occupation,
AS MANY a weary European politician has discovered, Greeks harbour a volatile mixture of feelings towards meddling foreigners: suspicion, victimhood, entitlement and a pang of lost eminence. The travails of the past century offer some explanation. A German occupation left Athens exhausted and starving. Then came a fratricidal conflict, which presaged the cold war. Villagers
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-2125601/DEBUT-FICTION.html?ito=feeds-newsxml ‘I wondered how I could get close to the truth, but I also feared knowing.’ The dilemma facing Maud after her husband Nikitas, an historian, dies in a car accident outside Athens underpins Sofka Zinovieff’s thought-provoking, moving novel. Natural curiosity about why her husband had driven out to the coast on the night he
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-house-on-paradise-street-by-sofka-zinovieff-7608847.html For the last 60 or so years, historical fiction has often served to exalt Britain and the Allied forces’ enlightened participation in the Second World War. Less celebrated is the cold October day in 1944 when Churchill and Stalin met in Moscow to carve up Eastern Europe between them. Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary became
Άλλη μία φρέσκια κυκλοφορία, με πολύ Ελληνικό ενδιαφέρον και καλές κριτικές στην Βρετανία όπου πρωτοεκδόθηκε – μέχρι και ο αυστηρός Economist το προτείνει ανεπιφύλακτα! Διπλή αφήγηση εδώ, από δύο γυναίκες. Η μία, η Μοντ είναι μία τυπική, κοντά στα 40 φλεγματική Αγγλίδα που έχει βρεθεί στην Ελλάδα διότι παντρεύτηκε από παθιασμένο έρωτα έναν Έλληνα δημοσιογράφο,
Οι πληγές του εμφυλίου πολέμου στην Ελλάδα όχι μόνο για τους πρωταγωνιστές του, αλλά και για τις επόμενες γενιές, στοιχειώνουν το «Σπίτι στην Οδό Παραδείσου» (κυκλοφορεί στα ελληνικά από τις εκδόσεις Ψυχογιός), το πρώτο μυθιστόρημα της Σόφκα Ζινόβιεφ, Αγγλίδας ανθρωπολόγου και συγγραφέως, που ζει στην Ελλάδα. Πρόκειται για το τρίτο βιβλίο της μετά την «Οδό
This timely novel of estranged sisters and a family consumed by history gives a compelling insight into contemporary Greece. The house on Paradise Street, Athens, is home to three generations of the Perifanis family. Told alternately by Maude (or Mondi, as the Greeks call her), Nikitas Perifanis’s English wife, and Antigone, his mother, whom he
http://fleurfisher.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/the-house-on-paradise-street-by-sofka-zinovieff/ When I saw that Sofka Zinovieff had written a novel I knew that I had to read it. I’ve perused her non-fiction in the library, with the intention of bringing it home one day when I make a little more space on my ticket, because I could see that she wrote with such clarity,
http://www.rte.ie/ten/2012/0517/sofka.html This first novel by Athens-based writer Sofka Zinovieff explores the tragic rupture in a Greek family, as two sisters, Alexandra and Antigone become alienated under the Nazis. Antigone joins the communists, Alexandra later marries Spiros, a policeman and thus remains steadily pro-establishment, through the Civil war and beyond the Junta years (1967 to 1974)