The dark shadow of History and the upheavals that it will bring into the lives of people, torn from the roots and the identity they seek, the spiritual wounds left indelibly by the Cold War, and the love that develops on its wave. Mira Papathanasopoulou has focused on these issues in her new book, “Children of the Great Silence”issued publications by Pataki.

We are in East Germany, in the early 1950s. The little hero, the one-armed Stavros, is born in a harsh Greek village on the day of the German invasion in 1941, grows up there, and then leaves with hundreds of other children for the German Democratic Republic. There, on the “other side”, he will study at the Eleftheri Greece Primary School in Dresden. The teacher will take Stavros under his protection when a young student is bullied for being disabled.

War destroys lives, cities, works of art and property. Houses and factories change hands. The life of the main characters changes dramatically from day to day.

However, the story soon turns into a romantic one, as Stavros falls in love with a Jewish woman. Here the author also touches upon the tragedy of the Jews. Papathanasopoulou’s new novel captures to the last paragraph, it has interesting characters, people of flesh and blood, it also has an allegorical tone that gives a different tone to the whole narrative flow.

What’s interesting about Papathanasopoulou is that she could have been “burned out” by the unexpected success of her famous novel Judas Kissed Hard (also published by Pataky) in 1998. A novel that managed to get published after several rejections and eventually became a bestseller with a circulation of over 300,000 copies in two years. In fact, it has been translated into many languages: French, Spanish, German, Russian, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Polish, Hebrew, Turkish and Czech. A little later, the plot of the book was transferred to the small screen. A large number of viewers watched the series of the same name directed by Tanasis Antoniou and starring Maria Tsompanaki and Danis Katranidis.

A huge success at a time when such sales figures for Greek books were unprecedented. Such success could “burn” a new writer, make her step hard to continue, or, on the other hand, become dangerously easy due to a reasonable, albeit dangerous self-importance. But this did not happen with M. Papathanasopoulou, who calmly and consistently continued to engage in her writing activities.

Now the author (and translator) is particularly popular, having had a significant career in the book industry with works such as What If I’m a Badger?, You, My Sweet Power, Mama Santissima, Toxic Compounds. arsenic”, “Blessed are the mourners”, etc. Her stories were included in such collections as “The Book of Betrayal”, “Entering Danger”, “I am writing you a letter”.