Selected by World Literature Today’s among 75 notable translations of 2015

The traumatic story of a Greek family that emigrates to the United States, as told by one of its offspring during an airplane journey which lasts 8 hours and 35 minutes, from New York to Athens.

Thirty-something American-Greek Jonathan Argyriou is travelling to his family’s homeland for the first time. He’s making the journey alone, but is weighed down by a heavy burden of “things lost in silence”, lies and unhappiness. Tsalikoglou’s slender novella packs an unexpectedly impressive punch in every way possible, managing to traverse the breadth of the 20th century, and the depths of the psychology of three generations of one family. The end result is a haunting, evocative and deeply moving study of grief.

Kastaniotis, 2013, 119 p.

Bookshelf: ‘The Secret Sister’ by Fotini Tsalikoglou