“My homeland, I answered, was a little girl named Rubina. She kept a tiny meadow under her bed and her only loyal friend was a colorful little pullet.” A retired and mentally unstable actor, Rubini/Rarau, recounts her childhood in rural Greece during the Occupation and the years that followed Greece’s liberation from Axis powers. While offering powerful portraits of the women in the village, Rarau gradually unravels her stream of memories that lead to the revelation of her mother’s hurtful secret. To save Rarau and her two sons from certain starvation, her mother, Assimina, takes the enemy as her lover. But, with victory, she will have to face the villagers’ vengeance… The bitterness Rarau has collected since childhood distorts the way she sees reality: “And why should I feel remorse? Besides, I am not Greece, I am Rarau, the artist! My only homeland is the two pensions I get.” Another brilliant story about the Occupation, one of the deepest scars in Greece’s history. Another bright example of the misery war inflicts on the human soul… “Similarly to Faulkner in his famous The Sound and the Fury, in The Daughter, Matessis gives voice to the poor in spirit. A very powerful novel.” L. Farnoux, Le Monde

Acerbi Prize, 2002
Rights sold to: Italy, Denmark, Romania, Spain. All other rights free again

Kastaniotis, 1990, 256 p.