{"id":7221,"date":"2018-04-23T06:39:32","date_gmt":"2018-04-23T10:39:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7221"},"modified":"2018-04-23T06:39:32","modified_gmt":"2018-04-23T10:39:32","slug":"the-greek-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7221","title":{"rendered":"****The Greek Wall"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"razorWritten by Nicolas Verdan, translated from the French by W. Donald Wilson \u2013The European refugee crisis has been front-and-center in the news media for so long it\u2019s become easy to tune it out. In award-winning Swiss author Nicolas Verdan\u2019s literary crime thriller, all the horrifying consequences of what happens when groups of people are ripe for exploitation are on display. And he doesn\u2019t stop there, underscoring how wide its ripples have spread in European society.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 2010, and Agent Evangelos of the Greek National Intelligence Service is sent to investigate a severed head found outside the northern city of Orestiada on the border separating Greece and non-EU Turkey border. Is it the head of a Westerner? That\u2019s what Evangelos\u2019s superiors want to know, and they want the answer to be \u2018yes.\u2019 Something else to blame on the refugees.<\/p>\n

Finnish members of the European Border and Coast Guard (Frontex) found the head near the bank of the Evros River. This strip of land is not only Greece\u2019s border but that of the EU\u2019s passport-free Schengen Area\u2014in a sense, all of Europe. It\u2019s the main crossing point for refugees into the European Union. Greek politicians want to build a Trump-like border wall there, and they want the EU to pay for it. Greece certainly can\u2019t. (In real life, a 10-mile wall\u2014actually a razor-wire fence\u2014was eventually built.)<\/p>\n

Verdan\u2019s novel \u2013 his first available in English \u2013 is part political thriller, part police procedural, part mystery. A brief prologue offers hints regarding who has lost his head, but the circumstances are murky.<\/p>\n

Much of this literary, sensitively written novel adopts the close-up point of view of Agent Evangelos, who takes the constant reversals of policy in stride simply by ignoring them. His focus is on solving the crime, and he moves doggedly forward, even when he\u2019s told not to push his inquiry too hard. Novels based on current events risk becoming outdated, but the essential humanity of Verdan\u2019s characters make this story timeless. An extra star here for humanity.
\n<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Nicolas Verdan, translated from the French by W. Donald Wilson \u2013The European refugee crisis has been front-and-center in the news media for so long it\u2019s become easy to tune it out. In award-winning Swiss author Nicolas Verdan\u2019s literary … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"****The Greek Wall - the jockeying behind construction of a razor wire barrier at the Greek-Turkish border in this political thriller-cum-crime novel","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,54,3,632,268,126],"tags":[1305,128,1306,1307,129],"class_list":["post-7221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-detective","category-mystery","category-police","category-politics","category-reading-2","tag-greece","tag-history","tag-nicolas-verdun","tag-the-greek-wall","tag-wars-and-conflicts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1St","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7223,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7221\/revisions\/7223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}