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Eleni
written by Nicholas Gage
Studio : Ballantine Books
by Ballantine Books
Release Date : 1996-09-29
Publisher : Ballantine Books
Released : 1996-09-29
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780345410436
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 55 reviews)
List Price : $14.95
Our Price : $2.84
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Product Description |
In 1948, as civil war ravaged Greece, children were abducted and sent to communist "camps" inside the Iron Curtain. Eleni Gatzoyiannis, forty-one, defied the traditions of her small village and the terror of the communist insurgents to arrange for the escape of her three daughters and her son, Nicola. For that act, she was imprisoned, tortured, and executed in cold blood.
Nicholas Gage joined his father in Massachusetts at the age of nine and grew up to become a top New York Times investigative reporter, honing his skills with one thought in mind: to return to Greece and uncover the one story he cared about most: the story of his mother.
Eleni takes you into the heart a village destroyed in the name of ideals and into the soul of a truly heroic woman. |
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important narration on personal courage & humanity |
This true story reveals humanity's deepest capacity for evil, and also its strongest drive to nurture, protect, and do good. It is a demonstration of the depths to which one can be pushed when survival is the basic need.
A most important, riveting read. It should be required reading for any political science classroom or discussion on the nature of the human. I strongly recommend this for any book club. You won't be able to put it down.
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It was no Con Air |
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I'm generally not into reading, but I decided that I would give this one a shot, expecting it to be as good as Face/Off. Boy was I mistaken. Cage should stick to acting. Do you remember in Snake Eyes when he punched that guy in the face? Do you remember in Boy in Blue when he punched that guy in the face? I enjoyed those moments more than I enjoyed reading Cage's book, or reading anything for that matter. |
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An important work |
There are few books on the Greek Civil war that erupted after 1945 between Communists and the rest of Greece. During the war some 158,000 or more people died, many at the hands of the Communists. Yet most books on the subject in English are still sympathetic to the Communists (seeRed Acropolis, Black Terror: The Greek Civil War And The Origins Of The Soviet-american Rivalry,1943-1949) and refuse to condemn the red terror and the mass killings. This book goes a slight way towards setting the record strait if only because it shows the story of one peasant woman in a small village known as Lia in the mountans of northern Greece. But the story of how the vilagers were used as slave labourers by the COmmunists, starved and finally tortured and murdered is a story of what befel all northern Greeks during the Communist insurgency. Westerners present this insurgency as 'romantic' as only westerners can present genocide as 'romantic'. But this sad and disgusting train of thought is finally shattered by this excellent and daring book that tells the story not only of Lia but of the peasants who lived there and Eleni and of course her son who survived and who has lived to return to Greece to tell the story.
Seth J. Frantzman |
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Coincidence? |
I have owned this book for over 10 years. Every time I read it I thought of my maternal grandmother (that was her generation) and all the other brave Greek mothers before her and cried like a baby. I passed it onto my second husband who is not of Greek descent. He loved it and really liked the name Eleni. That was about 5 years ago (we've been together over 6).
Our second daughter was just baptised Eleni in the Greek Orthodox church. It was the only name we could agree upon. My aunt & uncle came from Greece and told me a story of when my uncle was a little boy. He was injured by an unexploded bomb and was taken to a hospital in Athens. His grandmother went to visit him. She had been born and raised in Athens, although now living about an hour outside of the city, so she knew the short-cuts to the hospital. On her way to see her beloved grandson she was shot dead, mistaken for a man in disguise. This was at the beginning of the civil war. I had not heard this story before, and had no idea who my paternal grandmother was. Apparently, her name was Eleni. I wonder if this is why I was steered to this book and so moved by it? Ain't life funny? |
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First-hand account of the cruelty of war |
Author Nicholas Gage tells the story of the Greek civil war and how it personally affected him and his family. Most notably this book describes how politics, fear, greed, and desperation combined to culminate in the brutal torture and execution of his mother, Eleni, for the crime of merely saving her children from starvation or forced separation.
My brother highly recommended this book to me. I was a little put off by its length and the obscurity of its subject (I had never even heard about the Greek civil war), but as the story unfolded I found myself completely engrossed in it. The first 100 or so pages were just a little difficult absorb because of the necessary build-up of the scenario and the characters. I also struggled throughout the book to get a grasp of the numerous greek names of people and places. However, these were minor inconveniences to pay for the huge reward of learning about this incredible and disturbing experience.
Nicholas Gage very eloquently describes the cruelty and injustice that war tends to inflict on so many innocent victims. Everyone could benefit from learning about this story that he has so vividly portrayed in Eleni. |
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