This "healing" book plunges the reader in a world full of sea, colours, light and cool breeze that portray the many facets of Greek life, and at the same time gives simple, every day, apparently unimportant facts their real value. "Whoever derives pleasure from small things always wins the lottery in life", says the aged heroine who, born in the midst of the Smyrna Disaster of 1922, was rescued from the flames and brought to live in one of the Aegean islands where she found a second home and a loving family. As she spins out for us the difficulties she has had to face in her life, she initiates us to the most difficult art of all, the art of living. A precious initiation in our times of stress and alienation