Daughters of the Labyrinth

Ruth Padel

Paperback

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Do you recommend this book?

Yes!

'An immersive novel, steeped in the history and folklore of Crete: transporting, historically informative story-telling' Sunday Times

'A moving, superbly written exploration of a family with dark secrets. Crete itself becomes one of the main characters in the story' Irish Times, Best Books 2021

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This was my home. This harbour and sea. These golden alleys. But the town I grew up in has disappeared.

Broken by the death of her husband, Ri, a successful international artist living in London, returns to her ancestral home of Crete. The Greek island is known for its ancient myth and mass tourism, but when Ri returns she finds a secret, darker history. As the home she left deals with a looming Brexit, and the home she rediscovered grapples with a refugee crisis, Ri confronts her changing identity. Unearthing stories from her family's past leaves a permanent mark on her understanding of herself, her relationship to her country, and her art.

Lyrical, unsettling and evocative, Daughters of the Labyrinth explores the power of buried memory and the grip of the past on the present, and questions how well we can ever know our own family.

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'Daughters of the Labyrinth is a novel about a daughter's passionate quest for the truth about what happened to her parents in Crete during the German occupation. It is also a sumptuous and sensuous evocation of Crete itself, its landscape and culture. Ruth Padel's brings a poet's eye to this world of great physical beauty and gnarled legacy' Colm Tóibín

Book Details

Publisher: Corsair
Publish Date: Aug 2nd, 2022
Pages: 336
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 8.10in - 5.30in - 0.80in - 0.57lb
EAN: 9781472156389
Categories: • Literary• Family Life - General

About the Author

Ruth is an award-winning British poet, author of twelve acclaimed poetry collections and a wildlife novel set in India. Her non-fiction includes books on ancient Greek religion and poetry, and the influence of Greek myth on rock music. She is Professor of Poetry at King's College London and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and hr poems have appeared in the New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, The New Yorker, The White Review, Times Literary Supplement and The Guardian. Awardsinclude First Prize in the National Poetry Competition. Her lifelong links to Crete began as a student, when she worked on a dig for the British School of Archaeology at Knossos. She has sung in Heraklion City Choir, her first collection Summer Snow was called after a chasm in Cretan mountains and one of her tracks on Desert Island Discs was a Cretan folksong. www.ruthpadel.com

Praise for this book

'Daughters of the Labyrinth is a novel about a daughter's passionate quest for the truth about what happened to her parents in Crete during the German occupation. It is also a sumptuous and sensuous evocation of Crete itself, its landscape and culture. Ruth Padel's brings a poet's eye to this world of great physical beauty and gnarled legacy'--Colm Tóibín

'Ruth Padel brings a poet's ear for internal musical pattern, and deep and loving knowledge of the stones, light and colours of Crete, as she winds us into coils within coils of a family's dark history. She combines dramatic storytelling with moving reflectiveness, asking us to think again about whether it is better to remember or to forget?'--Marina Warner

'Animated by keen imaginative empathy and a strong sense of place, this moving, satisfying, layered novel will transport you to the amethyst Aegean'--Daily Mail

'A moving, superbly written exploration of a family with dark secrets. Crete itself becomes one of the main characters in the story.'--Irish Times, Best Books 2021

'A thought-provoking novel of identity, history and our times.'--The New European

'A slow-burner of a novel, lyrical and psychologically astute.'--Mail on Sunday

'An immersive novel, steeped in the history and folklore of Crete: transporting, historically informative story-telling'--Sunday Times

'Entrancing - a wonderfully rich and absorbing novel, delightful in its evocation of Crete and its many-layered history.'--The Scotsman

'I can't recommend this highly enough. Beautiful, moving, exquisitely layered and compelling. I absolutely loved it'--Christina Patterson (will need to ask her for permission to use)

'Best books to read this Autumn'--Slightly Foxed

It's a wonderfully rich and absorbing novel... it tells a compelling story while at the same time deepening our understanding of the complexity of our nature.--The Scotsman

The novel is a quest, excavation of the past, of wartime Crete...it is a wonderfully rich and absorbing novel. As is usually the case with the best fiction, it tells a compelling story while at the same time deepening our understanding of the complexity of our nature.--Yorkshire Post