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Join Gefyra for an on-line book club meeting on Saturday, October 18th at 10am PST/8pm Greece for a discussion about "The Scapegoat" by Sophia Nikolaidou, translated by Karen Emmerich. The discussion will be led by Professor Sharon Gerstal, Director, UCLA SNF Hellenic Center and Dr. Eirini Kotsovili, Senior Lecturer, Global Humanities, SFU.

This academic year’s book club is held in English and will feature Greek books in translation.

Book Synopsis

In 1948, the body of an American journalist is found floating in the bay off Thessaloniki. A small-time Greek journalist is tried and convicted for the murder… but when he’s released twelve years later, he claims his confession was the result of torture.

Flash forward to contemporary Greece, where a rebellious young high school student is given an assignment for a school project: find the truth. And as he begrudgingly takes it on, he begins to make a startling series of gripping discoveries–about history, love, and even his own family’s involvement.

Based on the real story of famed CBS reporter George Polk—journalism’s prestigious Polk Awards were named after him—The Scapegoat is a sweeping saga that brings together the Greece of the post-World War II era with the Greece of today, a country facing dangerous times once again.

As told by key players in the story—the dashing journalist’s Greek widow; the mother and sisters of the convicted man; the brutal Thessaloniki Chief of Police; a U.S. Foreign Office investigator, and, finally, the modern-day student, in the novel’s most stirring narration of all–The Scapegoatconfronts questions of truth, justice, and sacrifice… and how the past is always with us.

The Gefyra Book Club meeting is part of , a collaborative program established by the UCLA SNF Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture and the 51ÁÔÆæÈë¿Ú SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies with support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).