The Scapegoat

In 1948–1949 an American journalist is murdered in Thessaloniki; the government is shaken, foreign diplomats intervene, an innocent man goes to prison and the case is closed. In the school year 2010–2011 a former star pupil refuses to take the national university entrance exams, and his favourite teacher assigns him to research the old case. As he digs, the question becomes how ready the adults are to hear what he finds. The novel mixes history and invention, drawing on the trial and conviction of Grigoris Staktopoulos for the killing of the journalist George Polk during the Civil War, and maps everyday life, and school, in the Greece of 2011.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

345 pages in the original

Genres

Historical, Politics, Coming of age (assigned by AI)

Set in

Greece, 1948–1949, 2010–2011

First published

2012 by Μεταίχμιο

ISBN

9789605019006 (original)

9781612193847 (Melville House, United States)