This is a complex family story in which personal tales are imbued with magic, classical legend, Greek folklore and wider history. The comparison with One Hundred Years of Solitude is obvious and deserved. 

Narratively it is more demanding than Marquez's masterpiece, being told through ten tales, which move backwards and forwards chronologically and which focus on different characters in the story. The tales are interrelated, although it is not always clear how at first.  Moreover, like One Hundred Years of Solitude, this is a long book - it took me two weeks to read. 

The style is fascinating. The narrator's voice is sometimes brought to the fore, addressing us, the readers, directly and with familiarity. It is as if these tales are being told by elderly family members years after the event to Christoforos' descendents, which would justify how the non-sequitur nature of the ten tales. Sometimes I was reminded of the function of the classical Greek chorus, commenting on the central characters' actions directly to the audience. 

This novel is set at an interesting time in the history of Greece, when the centuries-old culture is beginning to be overtaken by a more modern world. That old culture was supported by an oral tradition, which in turn is reflected by the book's narration.

I was often reminded of vernacular folktales with their roots in classical Greek legends. For example: there is the story of Hesychios, a man so handsome that young women are bewitched by him and, having conceived his child, all die in childbirth. And yet his and the other tales are very much based in reality. Indeed the magic is barely visible. It is less overt that Marquez's. It is as if it is somewhere off to the side of your vision and when you try to look for it, you are not sure it was ever there. There is a psychological robustness about the actions and thoughts of the characters that is very modern. 

As you may have gathered, I really enjoyed this book and found it a fascinating read. Just as not of all of you are enamoured with Marquez's seminal work, not of all of you will like this book. But there will be many that do. 

I received this novel free from the publisher in return for a fair review.

I found this meandering, sprawling multigenerational family saga very hard to relate to and in the end gave up trying to keep track of what was going on and who exactly was who. Narrated in 10 interlinked tales, it tells the story of the vast Chrisoforos clan and is a mixture of straightforward narrative, folklore, mythology, history and magic realism, a hodge-podge that didn’t appeal to me at all. I couldn’t connect with any of the characters and didn't much care what happened to them. I admit to giving up about half way through and of course I may have missed something that would have converted me to the novel – but I don’t really think so. Zyranna Zateli is considered one of Greece’s most respected authors so maybe there’s a cultural divide here. Certainly many of the Greek reviews on Goodreads are 5*. But I remain unconvinced, although happy to have discovered and learnt a little about a new foreign author.