As a young Jewish-Greek female teacher arrives in a remote village of rural, mountainous Crete, searching for her tormented family’s roots, the reader becomes familiar with the contemporary hardcore customs of the island, such as the restricted access to some regions. In a scenery of law obedient civilians and outlaws, of love, crime and hidden secrets, the old-fashioned ways of the villagers collide with the new, more open-minded ways.

This “double sided” novel unfolds around the old Greek custom of the burning of Jude the apostle, Jude being traditionally attributed the fate of mythical Oedipus.

The Jude-Oidipus myth of the absolute evil forms its own path through the years to nowadays, in order to define the unchangeable structure of the closed societies. In this novel, myth and contemporary life blend as one, as also fiction and reality do.

Kastaniotis, 2009, 250 p.