Lo pasado no es un sueño

I was eight years old when my grandfather took me by the hand and did not let go until we found my parents in Athens. Who knows what might have happened if I had stayed in the village. It was 1946. Early spring 1946. The almond trees were blooming side by side and the countryside was in full bloom.' Thus begins the most autobiographical novel by Theodor Kallifatides and one of the most appreciated by its hundreds of thousands of readers. A week before Kallifatides fled the town, a group of fascists with guns in their hands had forced all the people to gather in the cemetery. There they stood, young and old in terror, as his infamous capo slowly called them one after another to finally select a few men to take with him. Their bodies were never found. With his characteristic simplicity and humanity, he narrates his life from the time he leaves his hometown until he returns to receive homage from his neighbors, now an established writer. Thus we discover childhood and adolescence in Athens governed by authoritarian regimes, the birth of political and class consciousness, the discovery of sexuality and love, exile to Sweden, the surprising ability to rebuild their working life there and form a family, and his career as a writer in a host language, Swedish. Kallifatides offers us another masterful book, to the delight of those who already know his work and those who are still lucky enough to discover it.