The Daughter

Daughter, The

Raraou is 60, a washed-up actress scraping a living in Athens, her cheery demeanour belying an existence that struggles with loneliness and memories of a tragic life that at times threatens to overwhelms her. For Raraou was a spirited young girl when her home town of Greece was occupied by the Germans during the war. And while the memory of her collaborator mother being pilloried in the streets haunts her dreams, in her retelling it is the months of near starvation that are most vivid, and the clear-as-a-bell recollection of the shape of her baby brother's wrist, broken by an armed German soldier. And finally, at 60, she "understood why everybody loves and respects the earth, why they want land: the land is full of graves". This is one of the best books on occupation I have ever read, as vital and vivid as Suite Francaise, and in its presentation of a young adolescent girl struggling under impossibly deprived conditions, it bears comparison with Anne Frank. I loved Raraou, and I loved Pavlos for creating her.

Nicola Barr