Get the free novella: The Bread of the Stranger

Thessaloniki, 1941. A city can starve with the sea right there in front of it. Nine-year-old Despina Naoumidis learns to read the soup line like a page. When the ration cards come, they are a relief. A decent man from her own streets is given a desk, and he asks only to write down every household, every soul in it, so that he can keep them safe. Her grandmother will not go to the desk, and she will not give the kind man her name.

The Bread of the Stranger is a short novella that stands alone. It is also the prequel to Fairer, Safer: the girl in it grows up to be the grandmother in The Wrong Light. It is set during the German occupation and the persecution of the city's Jews, and it is told with restraint.

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