Description

A modern classic from Greece, now in English for the first time.

Greece, a hundred years ago: in the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War, young men return from the battlefield, forever changed by what they have seen and done. They come home seeking revenge or forgiveness; all of them grieving. They might have survived the war, but peace does not come easily. The men are marked. These are their stories.

Hailed as the most important Greek novel of the twenty-first century, Gjak unfolds in an unnamed Arvanite village a closed rural community governed by its own codes of honour. Binding each soldier’s story is the red thread of gjak itself: an Arvanitic word meaning blood, bloodline, blood feud, and nation. With this thread, these interconnected tales are woven into one powerful, haunting portrait of a world in violent transition.

Publisher Review

‘What a brilliant little book…The nine bruising, bloodstained monologues of Gjak – already acknowledged as a modern masterwork of fiction in Greece – surely must, in this magnetically authentic and colloquial translation, be read and honoured far more widely. I can’t remember the last time I wished greater success for a book. For its enduring relevance. For its unnerving blend of tenderness and brutality. For its rueful and unflinching honesty. For simply being unignorable. It ought to be on the front table of every bookstore.’
– Jim Crace, author of Harvest and Quarantine

‘Blood inherited, blood endowed, blood spilled into the earth. The protagonists of these riveting stories struggle with their morality, their conscience, and with one another – in a language initially foreign, yet ultimately familiar, because it unapologetically belongs to them.’
– Yorgos Lanthimos

‘This book, which took Greece by storm, is an extraordinary accomplishment of the literary imagination, a visceral read that plunges us into the starkly violent world of the Greek peasantry of the early 20th century. Set in an unnamed village whose inhabitants speak a now lost mix of Greek and Albanian, it is a collection of short stories that depict the values and attitudes of men who went off to fight in a war they did not understand before returning to a world that no longer made sense.’
– Mark Mazower, historian and author of Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century and The Greek Revolution

‘Whether it’s thanks to critical acclaim or simply word of mouth – either way, everyone’s talking about Gjak.’
– Marilena Astrapellou,To Vima

‘I can’t recall feeling so moved by a novel. It didn’t feel like reading, it felt more like I was immersed in the telling of these stories, a silent witness or confessor, even. How beautiful this is, and how true and profoundly truthful and terrible. This is a work for the ages, art that is pure and unsparing and vast. And what a feat of translation! It sings from the page. Gjak is a remarkable book.’
-Donal Ryan, author of Heart, Be At Peace

‘That it is a masterpiece seems undeniable to me. It is bold, often shocking, and always intimate. Not since I first read Pedro Paramo have I encountered a book that was in such close contact with the ineffable.’
– Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds

‘Gjak uncorks a potent draught, equal parts vengeance, loss, tenderness and blood. Every story rumbles off the page full throated and unapologetic. Valvis and Papamarkos capture the voices of the storytellers that populate this book, holding them to account and humanizing their sins. In a world of uncertain masculinity, Gjak offers characters with strong hands, but perhaps a missing eye.’
– Thomas Grove, Pulitzer Prize winning correspondent for The Wall Street Journal