Story Overview

This is the story of Kapitanios Alexis Roussos, the charismatic, ruthless, and driven leader of a band of partisans operating in a mountainous region of northern Greek Macedonia, during the invasion and occupation of Greece by Italian, German, and Bulgarian armies following the outbreak of the Second World War.

The story also follows the exploits of some of Alexis’s comrades in arms. There is Georgios Lambridis, the son of a wealthy and prominent Athenian family and right-hand man to Alexis, who like him, wants not only to drive the hated invaders out of Greece, but also to overthrow the “rotten” and unfair capitalistic system that is destroying Greece.

Anestis Mavridis and his younger brother, Vasili, the sons of the charismatic papa Grigorious, priest of the small village of Prosotsani, are also very loyal followers of Alexis. As is Stavros Vardakis, an old war veteran who embarked on a life of violence and bloodshed after witnessing as a young boy the massacre of his whole family and village by irregular Bulgarian forces, during the violent struggles leading up to the emergence of the Greek State of Macedonia just before the outbreak of the Balkan Wars.

There is also the young and very beautiful Irini Apostolou, who has a dark secret that haunts her and also Vasili, a former school friend, and which almost destroys them both. She too later joins Alexis’s band in the mountains and helps him and his men fight the German and Bulgarian forces, and also the right-wing forces of Costas Grivas, the fanatic and psychotic hater of Alexis, Georgios, and Anestis, who is the leader of a Security Battalion fighting for the Germans.

And when the invaders are defeated and Greece is soon plunged into the throes of a catastrophic civil war that is tearing the country apart, he sets out on his own personal vendetta to destroy these men and all they stand for.

Katerina Donatelis, another young female character in this story, nurses the young wounded Vasili back to health when he is wounded by Bulgarian forces near her village. She also helps him to deal with his very debilitating psychological trauma, and teaches him the meaning of true love.