Thessaloniki: the crossroads between East and West... And in the turbulent, trouble-torn 20th century the city in which four lives cross, directly or indirectly... Nikos Bakolas tell how ordinary men and women struggled to survive during a period of Greek history -roughly from tthe 1930s to the late 1940- marked by oppression and violence and political polarities: the fascist dictatorship of Metaxas, the german occupation, the civil war. Against this backround Fotis, jack-of all-trades and adventurer, Christos, struggling journalist, Yannis, ambiguous son of a well-to-do family, and Angela, orphan refugee from Asia Minor, -as well as Fotis s son and Christos s three children- grow to maturity and taste both sweetness and pain. [...]