Aegean Tales

Leading Canadian translator, Sheila Fischman, brings these two awarding-winning novels, The Other and Anna Why, to an English-language audience for the first time. Shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction in 2001 and hailed by critics as a masterpiece, The Other begins during the German occupation of the Greek island of Leros. Young Thomas has plans to become a seaman and sail the oceans, but on his way to the harbour, he makes a detour and loses one of his legs in an explosion. Thomas spends years wondering what his life might have been had he turned right instead of left. Then one day, he meets his double - a man who once shared his dreams and was allowed to pursue them. Winner of the Prix littA(c)raire des collA(c)giens in 2005 and a bestseller in Quebec and France, Anna Why recounts the conflict between two caretakers at the Church of the Blessed Virgin: Sister Veroniki, a young novice full of religious zeal, and Sister Nicoletta, a world-wise ex-missionary who believes that only the humane way you practise a faith matters, not the slavish following of a doctrine. As the two nuns try to deal with their differences and their solitude, the deacon Maximos, hired to restore the church's icons, falls in love with Sister Veroniki.