The plot loosely focuses around the developing relationship between Dimitri, a rebellious son of a wealthy merchant, and Katerina, a talented semi-orphaned seamstress, which unfolds across the first half of the twentieth century in the Greek city of Thessaloniki. Their eventual fate is not left in doubt as they are married in the twenty-first century prologue, which means our interest is always chiefly concerned with the history of the city itself, in a manner that might remind readers of Edward Rutherfurd.
Like (I suspect) many British readers, my knowledge of the Thessalonians is limited to the biblical letters they received. As such, the main pleasure of Hislop’s work is fascinating story of the city’s three decades of crisis, from the Great Fire of 1917 to the civil war of the late 1940s – all topics which seem to have completely eluded the British curriculum-makers.
