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Back The Black Earth Save as PDF
Chapters (56)
  1. Cover
  2. THE BLACK EARTH
  3. Dedication
  4. Contents
  5. BOOK I
  6. CHAPTER ONE
  7. CHAPTER TWO
  8. CHAPTER THREE
  9. CHAPTER FOUR
  10. CHAPTER FIVE
  11. CHAPTER SIX
  12. CHAPTER SEVEN
  13. BOOK II
  14. CHAPTER EIGHT
  15. CHAPTER NINE
  16. CHAPTER TEN
  17. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  18. CHAPTER TWELVE
  19. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  20. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  21. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  22. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  23. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  24. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  25. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY
  27. BOOK III
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  33. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  34. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  35. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  36. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  40. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  41. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  42. BOOK IV
  43. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  44. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  45. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
  46. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
  47. CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
  48. CHAPTER FORTY
  49. CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
  50. CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
  51. CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
  52. CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
  53. CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
  54. About the Author
  55. By Philip Kazan
  56. Copyright

But Zoë walks back down the hill through the city of little plasterboard houses, where everyone is dreaming of what they have lost: touching, in sleep, all the precious things that have been taken from them. As she walks she sings to herself, letting the words come out as smoke in the cool air, as ghosts. Her ghosts.

BOOK III

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Piraeus, February 1942

Zoë looks around at the other people waiting for the tram back to Piraeus. The line stretches a long way in either direction. She is somewhere near the middle. There are hardly any trams these days. She will be here for hours. It doesn’t matter all that much. It isn’t as if there is any food waiting for her at home. At some point in the course of the day she will hide somewhere and eat the little square of cornbread, the precious bobóta, the waxy yellow colour of a four-day-old corpse, which is hiding in her bag. That will give her enough energy to make her way back to the Ntama Koupa, the Queen of Hearts Club off Omonia Square, and sing with the band for another night. The grey sky – the sky has been grey since Christmas – lets out a sigh of northerly breeze and begins to drizzle.