Mothers and Sons

A Best Book of 2024 by The New Yorker

An aging writer’s love letter to his elderly mother, this achingly beautiful work of autofiction traces their family’s history in Greece and in exile.

Theodor Kallifatides, an acclaimed Greek author exiled in Sweden for more than 4 decades at age 68, visits his 92-year-old mother, who still resides in Athens. Both know that this may be one of their last encounters before her death. During the week they spend together, they reminisce about the most important things in their lives, including the presence and absence of Theodor’s father, whose life story he is reading. There, his father explains his difficult journey, from his origins as a Greek exile in Turkey through his months… Keep Reading