The old photographs Despina carried.
These are the faces of the prequel — rendered as the careworn 1940s portraits a survivor might have kept in a drawer for the rest of her life. Ordinary, believable, specific people in a terrible winter. The menace in this story is never in a face; it is in cold, and paperwork, and a kind man with a stamp.
The Naoumidis household
Grave, watchful, older than her years — and, eighty years on, the trilogy's Yiayia Despina. The same dark, alert eyes that find you in the dark.
Mountain-refugee stock, a widow in black by the window. She names the danger before anyone else can see it: “First it is papers.”
A careful, decent, not-brave man with a clerk's stoop — who once smoothed the family name from Nahmias to Naoumidís, and carries the flicker of it.
The one who halves the loaf without taking off her coat. Warmth held steady over fear.
A year old, swaddled against the cold — and the milk that only comes against a stamp.
Across the courtyard — the Cohens
The quick one — the joke half a beat early — who learns to go still. Four steps across the same stones, and closer than blood.
A beard like the prophets in the icons, a sugared almond in his pocket. His people came to Salonica from Spain five centuries before there was a Greece to belong to.
A harbour stevedore, “arms like the mooring ropes” — strength a careful family could lean on.
Quiet, warm, careful. Despina only ever called her Kyría — the lady across the yard.
The mountain boy
Down from a village above Véroia; all elbows and watchful eyes, moving like water through the cracks of the city. He becomes the grandfather Hannah is born to.
The men with desks
The man who only wants everyone fed. Mild, helpful, reasonable — and that is precisely the point.
Not wicked — frightened. A decent man with hungry children, who will not quite meet your eye.
The church
The old priest of the great basilica, who reads Paul's letter “to this very city” — gravity, and a banked, sorrowing kindness.
The corridor — eighty years on
With the booksThe trilogy's cast — Hannah, the nurse who keeps faith worn light; Josh, who believes the system only wants to keep everyone safe; the older Yiayia Despina, who has seen the shape of it before; and the people of one Melbourne street — have their portraits made already. They'll join this gallery as each book is published.
The story this world was built for.
The Bread of the Stranger is a complete short story and the seed of everything here — free, and yours to keep. The readers' list is where the rest of the world arrives first.
Get the free prequel