If Hitler and Stalin recognized the Greeks’ courage, it’s about time the world did, too.
A grandfather reveals his past as a resistance fighter for Greece.
A framing prologue sets up the story: A grandson has discovered an old photograph in his grandparents' attic, leading his Papou, a Greek American, to confess a long-held secret. The first half is an episodic slog of military campaigns as the protagonist, 18-year-old Alexei, leaves his small fishing village of Agria to fight invading Italians. Along with his childhood friend Costa and the outnumbered and ill-equipped Greek army, he draws first blood in skirmishes in the hills before defeating Mussolini’s forces in Pogradec, an Albanian town. The boys return home to short-lived triumph. Costa, a lady’s man, settles down with Thalia, an older woman, and becomes a father to her son, Nico. Alexei marries Philia after winning the grudging respect of her wealthy father, Giorgios. This brief idyll is interrupted as the Greeks must again defend their borders, now against Hitler’s Wehrmacht. Many more battle scenes and skirmishes ensue. The women left behind as the Germans occupy Agria are treated predictably and stereotypically, as victims whom only men can protect—a role 11-year-old Nico prematurely assumes. The combat narrative takes on more urgency and interest as the two friends join a band of resistance fighters led by Koukidis, a fellow veteran of the Albanian campaign (a character based on a legendary Greek fighter). The battle scenes often veer into comic-book territory, however: No shot of any caliber can be fired without accompanying sound effects such as “bang,” “rat-a-tat-tat,” or “kaboom.” According to the book's epigraphs, Hitler admired the Greeks’ tenacity and Stalin thanked Greece for delaying the German invasion of Russia until winter. Even without such dubious testimonials, this debut novel's primary message is clear: Without Greece’s sacrifice of 10% of its population in resisting German occupation for 219 days, the Allied victory might have been seriously compromised.
If Hitler and Stalin recognized the Greeks’ courage, it’s about time the world did, too.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5107-5712-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
Hokey plot, good fun.
A business executive becomes an unjustly wanted man.
Walter Nash attends his estranged father Tiberius’ funeral, where Ty’s Army buddy, Shock, rips into him for not being the kind of man the Vietnam vet Ty was. Instead, Nash is the successful head of acquisitions for Sybaritic Investments, where he earns a handsome paycheck that supports his wife, Judith, and his teenage daughter, Maggie. An FBI agent approaches Nash after the funeral and asks him to be a mole in his company, because the feds consider chief executive Rhett Temple “a criminal consorting with some very dangerous people.” It’s “a chance to be a hero,” the agent says, while admitting that Nash’s personal and financial risks are immense. Indeed, readers soon find Temple and a cohort standing over a fresh corpse and wondering what to do with it. Temple is not an especially talented executive, and he frets that his hated father, the chairman of the board, will eventually replace him with Nash. (Father-son relationships are not glorified in this tale.) Temple is cartoonishly rotten. He answers to a mysterious woman in Asia, whom he rightly fears. He kills. He beds various women including Judith, whom he tries to turn against Nash. The story’s dramatic turn follows Maggie’s kidnapping, where Nash is wrongly accused. Believing Nash’s innocence, Shock helps him change completely with intense exercise, bulking up and tattooing his body, and learning how to fight and kill. Eventually he looks nothing like the dweeb who’d once taken up tennis instead of football, much to Ty’s undying disgust. Finding the victim and the kidnappers becomes his sole mission. As a child watching his father hunt, Nash could never have killed a living thing. But with his old life over—now he will kill, and he will take any risks necessary. His transformation is implausible, though at least he’s not green like the Incredible Hulk. Loose ends abound by the end as he ignores a plea to “not get on that damn plane,” so a sequel is a necessity.
Hokey plot, good fun.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781538757987
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
An emotionally acute study of manliness.
Scenes from the life of a well-off but emotionally damaged man.
Szalay’s sixth novel is a study of István, who as a 15-year-old in Hungary is lured into a sexual relationship with a married neighbor; when he has a confrontation with the woman’s husband, the man falls down the stairs and dies. Add in stints in a juvenile facility and as a soldier in Iraq, and István enters his 20s almost completely stunted emotionally. (Saying much besides “Okay” sometimes seems utterly beyond him.) Fueled by id, libido, and street drugs, he seems destined to be a casualty until, while working as a bouncer at a London strip club, he helps rescue the owner of a security firm who’s been assaulted; soon, he’s hired as the driver for a tycoon and his wife, with whom he begins an affair. István is a fascinating character in a kind of negative sense—he’s intriguing for all the ways he fails to confront his trauma, all the missed opportunities to find deeper connections. To that end, Szalay’s prose is emotionally bare, deliberately clipped and declarative, evoking István’s unwillingness (or incapacity) to look inside himself; he occasionally consults with a therapist, but a relentless passivity keeps him from opening up much. His capacity to fail upwards eventually catches up with him, and the novel becomes a more standard story about betrayal and inheritances, but it also turns on small but meaningful moments of heroism that suggest a deeper character than somebody who, as someone suggests, “exemplif[ies] a primitive form of masculinity.” István’s relentlessly stony approach to existence grates at times—there are a few too many “okay”s in the dialogue—but Szalay’s distanced approach has its payoffs. Being closed off, like István, doesn’t close off the world, and at times has tragic consequences.
An emotionally acute study of manliness.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781982122799
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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