Hearts of Stone

Name: Hearts of Stone
Rating: 4.3 (3139 reviews)

by Simon Scarrow

First published 2015

Amazon

4.3(3,139)

Lefkas, 1938 and 1943. Three young people—Andreas, Eleni and the German Peter—form a friendship before occupation places them on opposing sides of the war. Peter returns as a German officer, while Andreas and Eleni become involved with resistance on the island. Their earlier attachments survive inside a conflict shaped by reprisals, divided loyalties and the danger faced by civilians who help partisans or refuse collaboration.

Occupation destroys the neutrality that made the pre-war friendship possible. Peter’s uniform gives him power within the occupying system even when his private sympathies remain complicated, while Andreas and Eleni face the consequences of resistance in a population vulnerable to collective punishment. The novel uses the island setting to show how intimate relationships can become politically charged when every act of help or silence is judged as collaboration or defiance.