Melina Breaking Free. Dimitra Mantheakis

Dimitra Mantheakis is one of the most prominent and gifted writers in Greece today. She grew up in Sparta and attended Athens University where she studied literature and archaeology. Her international best-seller I, the Taliban’s Wife has been translated into three languages and was on the best seller lists in Germany for many months.

Melina Breaking Free is her seventh book, an acclaimed example of modern Greek literature, and the first to be translated into English. Dimitra Mantheakis lives in Athens with her husband, Alexis Mantheakis, an author and political analyst. They have a daughter who is a journalist.

Preface

1950’s. In a small isolated Greek provincial town in post-Civil War Greece a closely-knit group of young friends - Melina, Sarantos, Iakovos, Sofia, Mary, Urania and Paulina - will discover that behind the curtain of strict morality and social righteousness their fellow villagers’ passions are boiling over and there are hidden secrets. As they grow older the young protagonists will pass from innocence to an awakening of the flesh with these sexual experiences indelibly marking their lives. They come to realise that sex is not only pleasure but hides numerous disappointments and pitfalls when games of sensuality also involve the heart. Shattered dreams, abandonment, exploitation and callousness lie ahead for the newly-initiated youths and girls as they are called on to handle each new situation according to their character and beliefs. Will they be able to overcome unforeseen obstacles in their struggle or will they be swept away by what appears to be written for each of them by Fate?

Loves that last for a lifetime, hatreds, passions, sex steeped in infinite sensuality, deep disappointments and a search for redemption are interwoven in the telling of this tale of awakening desire. Reading Dimitra Mantheakis’ latest book will perhaps make the reader recall their own first stirrings of the flesh and have them identify with the sentiments and experiences of the young protagonists.

CHAPTER 1

1950’s. The pale light of the winter morning illuminated the small provincial town wedged in the embrace of the valley whose dark green foliage and dense humble bushes still held onto the previous night’s rain. The two mountains, one to the left and the other to the right, appeared to be hugging the houses, roads and orchards below them in an embrace of stone. One mountain, almost vertical, rose up darkly, menacingly, totally stripped of vegetation with its back bent as if hunched over, kneeling in prayer. Depending on the play of the sun’s rays the strange colour of its rocks and its crevasses made up of precipitous gorges one moment were blue and the next grey, and black in their depths. The other mountain, lying sensuously on the horizon and covered with dense vegetation sucked life from the red earth that covered it like a mother who would never deprive her suckling children of her breast, reminding everyone that it would not stop nourishing its children, the trees and plants,.

And in the distance, the sea. Restless, a traveler, greedily licking the white pebbles on the shoreline, covering them with seaweed juices and the taste of salt, and then withdrawing, sated, in a light swell that crashed noisily on the weathered rocks of the two headlands.

A frosty breeze slid over the red tiled roofs, rhythmically slamming the half-open window shutters and quietly whispering secrets hidden behind the frozen window panes to the wide open ears of fireplaces, and they, in turn replied with a puff of smoke and a promise not to cave into to temptation and disclose any of these revelations.

The small town was almost totally

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