The House on Paradise Street — Sofka Zinovieff

This "fiercely absorbing, passionate novel" ("The Guardian"), a bestseller in the UK, tells the epic tale of two sisters in the war-torn streets of Nazi--occupied Athens.

In 2008 Antigone Perifanis returns to her family home in Athens after sixty 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. What Antigone doesn't know is that another family member is about to step into her life, re-opening old wounds and calling into question everything she believed about the life of her son. Nikitas had been distressed in the days before his death and, curious to learn the reason, his English widow Maud starts to investigate his complicated past.

Maud reignites a bitter family feud and discovers the heartbreaking story of a young mother caught up in the political tides of the Greek Civil War, forced to make a terrible decision that would blight not only her life but the lives of future generations.

"The House on Paradise Street" is a gorgeously written novel about love and loss. Taking us from Nazi-occupied Athens through the military junta years and on into the troubled city of recent times, it vividly reveals what happens when ideology threatens to subsume our sense of humanity.