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Praise for The Shepherds of
Shadows: “The Shepherds of Shadows thrills with its storytelling, weaving larger-than-life people with greater-than-imagination occurrences... This historical novel presents a sprawling panorama of a legendary Greek era." —Vassilis Lambropoulos, auther of The Tragic Idea |
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Waging War in the struggle for Greek Independence Thirty-one years after masterful storyteller and prolific author Harry Mark Petrakis wrote the historical novel The Hour of the Bell - set in the first year of Greece’s war of independence from the Turkish Empire - he now carries the narrative for-ward in his newest work, The Shepherds of Shadows. With this powerful sequel, Petrakis captures the fury and ferocity of revolution in the country that formed the bedrock of western culture. Featuring many of the characters who appeared in the earlier book, The Shepherds of Shadows depicts the horrors of war in battle scenes that echo the visceral starkness of conict found in Homer’s Iliad. The novel also includes a vivid portrayal of Lord Byron, who, through his poetry, supported the cause of Greece’s fight for independence inspiring the world to provide aid and volunteers for the struggle. Byron himself traveled to Greece to join the war for liberation. Woven through the tapestry of war are stories of the love of a young guerilla fighter for a Greek girl and her child, born of a brutal rape, as well as the love of the scribe, Xanthos, for a village woman widowed by the war. There are lyrical descriptions of a village wedding and of the rituals of a village funeral. And always there is the mystical, overpowering presence of the Greek landscape and its majestic past blending reality and myth, as Petrakis creates a modern epic based on one of the most savage yet least known conicts in European history. |
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Praise for
The Hour of the Bell: — Publisher's Weekly "A tale of the 1821 Greek War of Independence that will endure as
a remarakable literary achievement." |
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Revisiting a Revolution In 1821, in the geographically small but culturally and historically rich country of Greece, a revolution began to overturn four terrible centuries of slavery the Greeks had endured under the Ottoman Turks. Harry Mark Petrakis’s historical novel The Hour of the Bell recalls the first year of the revolt. Petrakis provides a panoramic view of the conict through the stories of a variety of characters, including a village priest grief-stricken over the killing of his Turkish neighbors; a guerilla captain leading a band of wild mountain ghters against the Turkish garrisons; the wife of Prince Petrobey of the Mani, embittered by the fighting that takes the lives of her sons; a sea captain commanding the smaller Greek brigs in brilliant forays against the larger Turkish frigates; and a scribe to the legendary General Kolokotronis. Each character provides a dening perspective on the small but erce conict that altered the course of European history. |
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