Harraga

To the Reader

How beautiful it would be if this story were purely the fruit of my imagination. It would read like a retelling of the parable of the grain of wheat, it would speak of love, of death and resurrection. And there are enchanting ghosts on every page, and characters so colourful you could wear them as a scarf.

But it is a true story, true from beginning to end, the characters, the names, the dates, the places are real and so it speaks only of the wretchedness of a world which no longer has faith, or values, which can only trumpet its transgression and its disgrace.

The reader is free to take it as either or indeed as both since even the people in this book are incapable of telling the real from the imaginary.

What follows is the story of Lamia. Driven to abject solitude by the vagaries of life, like the grain of wheat that falls on rocky ground, she is dying, until one miraculous day in summer, something within her blossoms, something as profoundly real as it is utterly fantastical: love.

The best thing to do is to listen as she tells her story which, like the seasons, unfolds over four acts with an epilogue that leaves open a window onto the future.