Over a period of months I listened to the tale told to me by this Greek hair dresser about the tragic lives of her forebears who had lived in Turkey until surviving members were forced out after the Greco-Turkish wars of 1919-1922. A tale that included soaring successes and tragic failures, some at the hands of a bitter fate, others because of their own poor judgments and reckless decisions. I was fascinated at this glimpse into another time, another place, a complicated cult

And now to Helena, the last in a long line of forebears to carry the ultimate burden of restoring family honour, four generations after her great grandfather’s quest to restore her family’s rightful place in old Byzantine history. But she’s only a hair dresser, you might say, incredulous. How can she achieve anything by doing that? By achieving international fame, I say. She can get her face on the covers of all the magazines. She can compete and win prizes. She can travel ev

Once there was a time when there was a happy co-mingling of Greeks and Turks. Then there wasn't. I didn’t begin with a plot, but with a character, the patriarch Yiannis. I tried to imagine him living a subsistence existence on the vast Anatolian Plateau, a king in his own small world. That is, until he learned of a forebear who had once been advisor to an Ottoman Caliphate. And so began my journey with him - and his descendants - to restore what he believed he had lost. I ask