When snow fell on the lemon tree blossoms

The NY PELLA Publishing Co.

The book-a fictional memoir-is a young Greek boy’s journal for the seven-yearperiod, 1939 to 1946, before World War II, and during the Nazi Occupation and the subsequent Civil War. The young boy is the son of a distinguished provincial family, the dignity and discord of which are a microcosm of the Greek society of that time. The young Peloponnesian records a unique period of time: sweet and carefree just before the War, despite the anguished cries from the rest of Europe; heroic in 1940-41 and during the Resistance against foreign and homegrown tormentors; nightmarish during the German Occupation and the subsequent fratricidal conflict. Under these circumstances he matures early. His first kaleidoscopic writings mirror his childhood innocence. But above all, the young boy’s chronicle is an account of human endurance and renewal, and it makes riveting reading in the context of the current difficulties facing Greece.

Comments regarding the book: “This unique tale of the anguish of World War II in Greece and the Civil War that followed it, seen through the eyes of a young Spartan boy, is one of the most moving books on Greece that I have ever read.”

-Ronald Stroud, Professor (Emeritus), University of California, Berkeley

“This book delights with the abundant slices of life that Petrakis manages to fit within a short and compact narrative. The author evokes history in ways that are both light and deeply felt because what he mostly cares about is eternal human nature.”

-Maria Mavroudi, Professor, University of California, Berkeley

“It is full of human warmth . . .”

-Ion Vorres, President, Vorres Museum, Athens

“Petrakis powerfully narrates the epic struggle of the Greek people of the Peloponnese for Justice and Democracy before, during and after the Italo-German occupation and decimation of Greece. As a young eyewitness of these events and as a participant his account is alive and perceptive. His account is indeed a prose-version epic”.

-Speros Vryonis, Professor (Emeritus)

“It is a vivid, often gripping, depiction of growing up during the Nazi occupation of Greece . . . it is of exceptional merit.”

-Thanasis Maskaleris, Professor (Emeritus), San Francisco State University

Book is available ($15.00 plus $4.00 for handling and shipping) from

the publishers or L. Petrakis, lpetrakis@msn.com/ 510-548-5532

*Petrakis was born in Sparta, moved to Athens in 1946, and to the US in 1951. He received a PhD in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley; taught at various universities-in the US, France and Greece- served as Department Chairman and Senior Scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and worked in the private sector. He specialized in energy and environmental issues and has published six books and more than one hundred and fifty scientific studies.