Alexandra, a retired high school principal who lives in isolation in a village in Crete, carefully prepares the Sunday meal: her two children, Thanasis and Sofia, will visit her for lunch. The menu features Cretan pilaf, the famous wedding pilaf.
During the preparations, and later when the children have already left, Alexandra stirs up and reflects on her past life, the responsibilities and mistakes of the past, in a desperate effort to rationally manage her guilt over an event unbearable to herself and horrifically repugnant in the eyes of the world...
Cretan Pilaf is a novel about maternal love and loss, about the role of the wife and mother, women in general, in a male-dominated society. And, above all, about the often tragic dilemmas of the modern person. Crete, in the background, ever-present, sets the tone of the narrative.
