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The Cypriot

The Cypriot

Author(s): Andreas Koumi

Location(s): Cyprus

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): 1950s

A highly topical love story, with Muslim/Christian conflict at its heart; a vivid, human evocation of a political situation that, decades on, is returning to
the news as one of the EU’s greatest challenges.

The Cypriot is a powerful story of love across a divide of religion and identity, of passionate loyalties and heartrending choices.

It is the 1950s, and Cyprus is under British rule; the struggle for freedom begins. To the Orthodox Christian majority, freedom means enosis – union with Greece. To the Muslim minority, enosis means disaster. Andonis, a
Christian, struggles for his own freedom: to be a tailor and escape a life in his father’s fields; to be a Cypriot and be with his forbidden Muslim love. At stake are family and friendships, beliefs and traditions, village and homeland. The novel builds to a climax in the Turkish invasion of 1974, an event whose impact is still felt regionally and globally.

This is a gripping story of a community torn apart by outside forces, of mistrust and bloodshed fuelled by international politics. It gives the background to the partition and acrimony that still exist in Cyprus, now
reappearing on news agendas with an EU angle, following Cyprus’s accession and the start of Turkey’s membership negotiations.

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