The largest part of the novel is set in the Agia Olga hospital. Few days after the outbreak of the battle of Athens, Zoi is hurried to the hospital suffering severe injuries to her limbs after the British bomb the school where the young protagonist and her comrades had gathered for an EPON meeting. While the street-fights are taking over the neighborhoods of Athens, the patients of the Agia Olga go on a hunger strike in protest of their poor treatment by the British soldiers who are in control of the hospital. The Agia Olga defines the boundaries between two distinct worlds; the world of those inside the hospital and the world of those outside the hospital. This inside/outside spatial dichotomy determines the ways in which the battle of Athens is perceived by the characters of the novel. Overwhelmed by the success of their hunger strike, those inside the hospital are convinced that the ELAS will win the battle. At the same time those outside the hospital who experience the events firsthand, are aware that the ELAS forces are losing ground and that the British have now gained the upper hand. This constant interplay between what those inside the hospital believe as opposed to what those outside the hospital witness allows the reader to perceive the events of the Dekemvriana through multiple perspectives.
One of the few novels …show more content…
All blame for the outbreak of the Dekemvriana is attributed to the foreign factor and seen as part of one man’s deliberate plan to decimate the EAM in order to secure that Greece remains within the British so-called ‘sphere of influence’ as provided for in the notorious Churchill-Stalin ‘Percentages