THE SUN OF DEATH

by Pandelis Prevalakis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 19, 1964

Novel that has for its theme the elemental forces of life and death as they ay each other out against the natural backdrop of a Greek island, wins, in the first place, spontaneous praise for its simplicity. A young Cretan boy orphaned by the sea goes to live with his aunt by the inland mountains and loses, one after another, the hings he loves to a violent death--his cousin in the war, his youthful love in an accident, even the mythic village stallion to wanton murder. His story resembles one of his aunt's tales from pastoral folklore, so consonant is it with the forces of nature--burning sun, fertile vineyards, and the distant threatening sea--and with the forces of an--blood revenge, wartime cruelty, and the almost saintly religious goodness of his aunt. Yorgakis becomes aware of all of them as he replaces his cousin as the object of evenge, a debt his beloved aunt pays for him with her life. Perhaps it is sun, perhaps the folk, perhaps the boy's own gifts that his old master Loizo hopes to turn to poetry--perhaps it is all of them that stamp his story, not with the morbidity of iolence and death, but with a winning struggle for life. Simple, almost primitive, the tale and his telling of it, but very human and (it seems to earn the word) beautiful. A folkloric novel, well read as such.

Pub Date: Oct. 19, 1964

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1964

Categories: FICTION