Switching between childhood and old age, the past and the present, this is a really compelling novel about a Greek Jew, a member of a once wealthy family living on a Greek island, caught up in the turmoil of World War II. Based on the author’s own experiences, much of the novel I found enormously enjoyable. The portrait of the protagonist’s childhood as part of a fishing community, his later travails with the occupying Nazis and the effects of the Holocaust on Greek Jews (easy to forget the islands’ Jews suffered too) I nevertheless found the latter parts of his life less convincing. What happens to him is understandable but I didn’t feel such a connection to him at this stage of his life. Nevertheless it’s an original, thoughtful and thought-provoking novel, well-written and well-paced and mostly thoroughly engaging.