Yiayia Despina

Written for readers who have finished Book 1.

Yiayia Despina is Hannah's grandmother — a Greek widow of around ninety, tiny and frail in body but undimmed in mind. She lived through the occupation of Greece as a girl, and that memory lets her recognise the shape of what is coming long before the comfortable world around her will. Immovable, clear-eyed, and tender, she is the family's living proof that ordinary faith can be unbreakable. Her younger self is the subject of the prequel novella, The Bread of the Stranger.

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