Holy Icon

It is the story of a painter-chaplain in a country where depictions are forbidden, but essentially it deals with the issue of crypto-Christianity in Pontus in 1850.

Pontos, Kromni, 1850. Nostalgic place names, images of mountainous landscapes, running waters and stone mansions, with dining, hospitality customs and many wines, with feasts, kemenzedes, dances and festivals with competitions. Old men who keep the word of honour alternate with terrible bandits, bullies and gazidis. Blue-eyed women, obedient girls and a widowed tsahpin color the narrative. Mirrors, portraits of beautiful women, sacred icons and hagiographies circulate though forbidden. Europeans and Turks all parade with their original features and a friend acts like a machine god giving solutions. Priests and mullahs, overt and covert, cooperate and quarrel, hate and fear, but none of them betray the big secret: that they are all crypto-Christians!

Superstitions, amulets, amulets, holy water, funerals, rosaries and rosaries, everything moves on a double level in a theatre of the absurd dictated by the violence of history. Hidden names, hidden loves, hidden chapels, hidden religion, hidden identity, as shaped by centuries of violence and fear for the mere survival of an ancient people and a powerful civilization. A complex and layered task for a life of risky and dead-end lives that only nimble people could handle, always at great cost. A book that stimulates all the reader’s emotions and combines drama interspersed with comic scenes. Pontians will find it touching and nostalgic, other Greeks informative and interesting, but for everyone it will be enjoyable. A novel whose theme is its value.