Going Back: a Greek political thriller

by Tony Chapman

Anna Kouridakis is going home to Greece. It is 1974 and she is trying to pick up the pieces of a life shattered by the military dictatorship that has ruined the country and her.

Going Back re-tells the events of those years, vividly evoking the Greece and London of the 1960s: the heady student life, the shock of the April ’67 coup, the cruelty of the men who imposed a barbaric regime and the impact on the lives of those such as Anna and her lover Dimities.

Going back is always hard, never more so than for a woman moving from a country making social progress to one repressed for so long by fear. As Greece takes its stumbling steps towards democracy so Anna tries to rebuild a life. But first she has to come to terms with a past that is still chillingly present.

Going Back is a passionate love story, an indictment of repression and a lyrical tribute to a country that has suffered so much.

398 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 13, 2017

Reviews

[Suzi Stembridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book. That said it is a story not just set in Greece in the late sixties- early seventies, the time of the rule of the Colonels’s Junta, but this is a story about a very brutal regime and Chapman is not afraid to describe this brutality and torture in some detail. As such some readers might feel it is an uncomfortable read despite, or perhaps because of, incredibly well-drawn characters. Yet through the horror, the tales of courage, love, sincerity and bravery show this to be an author who knows Greece, it’s modern history, its foibles and character as well as taking his readers into the Athens of the time, and the islands of Paros, Rhodes including Lindos, and Leros. I know most of these places, the streets and places described and I was absolutely transported to these locations and its page turning storyline.