A contemporary parable, rich in Greek imagery both Christian and Pagan. Boldly written and emotionally stirring.

A wounded lion, a battered Jeremiah, limping Leonidas Matsoukas is not quite the lustful, Zorba-like hero last encountered in Petrakis's 1966 novel, A Dream of Kings . At the start of this heartbreaking new saga, Matsoukas, after burying his son in Greece and enduring five years of torture in a Greek prison, returns to Chicago to find his old neighborhood gone. His wife, Caliopeok , who assumed him dead, has remarried a Greek-American real estate magnate. Still deeply in love with her, Matsoukas takes solace in a fatherly relationship with a young single mother. But when the old swashbuckler discovers that the jailer who tortured him is now living in Chicago, exacting vengeance becomes his consuming passion. Despite some excesses, including grandiloquent dialogue and overt comparisons between the protagonist and Anthony Quinn, this moving, darkly lyrical, even noble story rises in moments of dramatic intensity to a neat double-surprise ending. 
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