Aphrodite and Others

Aphrodite - priest's wife, matriarch, illiterate - has lived in her village for eighty-six years.  Her struggle and hardship have been echoed by national and international upheavals, by war, dictatorship and famine.  In writing the story of her mother-in-law's life, Gillian Bouras recounts her own difficulties as an educated, independent Westerner coming to terms with a woman so culturally different and so domestically powerful.  Available here.