The most thrilling stories are usually the real-life tales of people caught in the whirlwind of historical events and great changes, often but not always by their own choice.

In the pages of this book, Georgios Vasiliou narrates the Odyssey, as he rightfully calls it, of his family and himself from the early decades of the 20th century until 1988, when he was elected President of the Republic of Cyprus. He promises us two more volumes that will cover the period of his Presidency and the years that follow until today.

Georgios Vasiliou has been and continues to be a very unique personality. He is certainly not the traditional politician one encounters in Cyprus and Greece. Far from it. In this book, we gain a much better understanding of the hows and whys by witnessing through his own eyes the great adventure of the Vasiliou family in an important part of the past century, the century of grand ideas that often went unfulfilled, of harsh conflicts that left many millions of victims in their wake, the century of progress and regression.

The century of contradictions, in other words, that left indelible marks on the path of Great History. Cyprus and Greece experienced it very intensely, just like the rest of Europe did.

[Excerpt from the text of the preface]