Greek Gold: a novel in two parts

This is the story of a wartime hero and the daughter he never knew. In 1943, Alex, a newly married SOE agent, is dropped into German-occupied northern Greece. Badly hurt on landing, separated from supplies and his wireless operator, he gets in with the ‘wrong’ band of resistance fighters. His second mistake is to fall in love with a Rumanian-Greek, Ileana. Within a couple of months, he is dead. His daughter Helen, born after he was killed and now a widow herself, visits the scene of his death, hoping to find out more about his heroic action. Slowly she learns the truth from the villagers, in the company of newly-met Heinrich, a German plant collector, lecturer and widower. Helen revises the picture of her father. He was not the hero she thought he was but his all-too-human failings have brought him alive for her. Comment by Frederic Raphael: Susan Barrett’s lively new novel catches the split personality of Greece and the Greeks with such assurance that it could only have been written by someone who has lived in the country and speaks the language, as the author has and does. I have some knowledge, but not as much as hers, when it comes to the dark, brave days of the war and after, and she never hits a wrong note. An exciting and moving piece of work. F.R.