Aphrodite’s War, by Andrea Busfield

It is Cyprus, 1955, and fighting erupts in the devastating civil war. Young Greek “Loukis”, bent on revenge and to prove his love for “Praxi”, joins a cell of guerrillas, but his heroic dreams are shattered by the violent death of his comrades. Completely disillusioned, Loukis returns home but again happiness eludes him. This is no “Captain Corelli” clone, but an autonomous novel:- absorbing, compassionate and sometimes shocking. The horror of war and the indomitability of the human spirit are conveyed with true insight and depth of feeling: “People who have been to the brink of hell, don’t want to go over the edge.”

What this author did for Afghanistan in her novel Born Under a Million Shadows she does equally well for Cyprus and Greece.