Review Detail

On the eve of World War Two a small boy, Evangelos, leads an idyllic life with his family in a serene, tradition-governed community on the outskirts of Athens. Their serenity is shattered by a series of catastrophes beginning when Greece is invaded by the armed forces of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Astonishingly, the ill-equipped, outnumbered Greeks manage to repel the invasion, only to have Mussolini call in his ally, Adolf Hitler. Jackboots march through the ancient streets, the swastika flag rises over the Acropolis and German troops are stationed across the road from Evangelos’ house. After a long and bitter Occupation the Allies eventually arrive to replace the Germans, but their presence turns out to be shockingly different from the liberation that the besieged Greeks had expected.
Throughout it all, little Evangelos slips through the neighborhood like a mouse, always underfoot, watching events from the unique vantage point of an ever-present witness.
Gripping, frightening, poetic, humorous and compulsively readable, My Father Had This Luger … isn’t only a vivid picture of Europe at war and of a vanished world. It’s also an unforgettable portrait of soldiers, of civilians under fire, of heroism that achieves no public renown, of the transcendent and universal power of family, of compassion, of the extraordinary resources of ordinary people, of human endurance, laughter and the will to survive.