Natalie Bakopoulos has that rare gift, the ability to imagine a traumatic historical event in the form of individual lives and ordinary details. The Green Shore is compelling, personal, and full of quietly real moments.

If there is any good in life, in history, in my own past, I invoke it now. I invoke it with all the passion with which I have lived.

Festina Lente (Hurry in slowly)

I wasn't brought up to be dazzled by money or fame.

No book that is written for an external purpose is going to be a passionately felt book for the writer or the reader. I don't see the point in doing that.

I keep telling myself I should try very hard to write a novel of about 210 pages... I don't seem to be capable of it, but I keep hoping it will happen.

And how could anyone consent to give up the smell of open books, old or new?