About accidental characters:

Where did my character Spiros come from? Next to Helena, it is he, her great uncle, who burns many of the pages with his sufferings and brief triumphs. An accidental character, I call him, since I created him only because I felt that first-son Adam needed a brother.

Somehow he becomes Cain to his brother Abel. Yearning for his father’s acceptance, he works his body to dust. He racks his soul. At his shoulder stands his fair-looking gentle brother Adam who is both his parents’ favourite.

Jealous, both loving and hating him, Spiros works until his hands bleed, until his belly claws with hunger. All the while Adam hides under an oleander bush dreaming about the mythical lives of his forebears; of tribes who once lived on the Anatolian Plateau before him.