Wildcat Under Glass by Alki Zei GOOD 1969 HC 177 pages Holt, Rinehart & Winston

Former library book in good condition: cover has light wear, usual library marks/stamps; pages are lightly discolored. ISBN 030680107

"Once upon a time there lived in the forest a wildcat and it had one black eye and one that was all blue...When it saw out of its blue eye...it walked among men and helped them...but when its black eye was open it destroyed the work of man..."

Such is the legend told to Melia and her sister Myrto about the wildcat in the glass case in their parlor.

In this beautifully written adventure of the effect on an average family of the Fascist dictatorship in Greece in the late 1930s, comedy and tragedy are intertwined to make a book that is memorable, exciting, funny, and heartbreaking at once. Alki Zei sets her story during the period beginning August 4, 1936, that long day when only the black eye of the wildcat was open, the day the Fascist dictator took over Greece, changing lives, splitting loyalties, as it does in Melia's own family.