In 1953, Alexandros Kotsias published the emblematic Siege, the first novel of modern Greek literature about the Civil War. Its protagonist is Mínas Papathanasís, a security officer who, during the last period of the Occupation, barricaded with his men in Sepolia, clashes fatally with armed members of the Left. Critics recognize great virtues in the young author; however, the work causes a political uproar. The wounds of the Civil War are still fresh. The Left characterizes the work as "black political literature," claiming it glorifies the positions of the far-right collaborators with the Germans.

After the fall of the junta in 1974, leftist poet Títos Patríkkios notes that the novel does not defend the ideology of the security battalions but dramatically reconstructs some of the darkest moments of Greek national life.

This current edition includes for the first time the linguistic revisions made by the author shortly before his death in 1992; it also features extensive notes by Michail S. Kalavrou, a rich anthology of critical notes, and a concluding note by Eleni Kehayioglou.

"The Siege was able to highlight the ideological and practical mechanisms that, in order to sustain themselves, must eliminate those who resist them, and that by functioning force those who carry them to destroy anyone they could love, even their very selves." Títos Patríkkios

"The young Alexandros Kotsias then touched with his own hands, without being burned, the fluid, fiery magma of that era. A magma that, when it finally cooled, although hard and stony, was shaped and reshaped by him to deliver to us, from book to book and from search to search, but always with the same obsessions, as befits a great author, the essence of the human soul peeled and the unseen side of modern Greek pathology fully revealed." Máro Douka