From INTERNATIONAL BEST SELLING AUTHOR Sara Alexi, who ranks as one of Amazon.co.uk's TOP Literary Fiction authors

The third book in the Greek Village Collection

The Explosive Nature of Friendship explores the tensions that exist between two lifelong friends.

Mitsos, now an old man, leads a solitary and ordered life, which is interrupted by the arrival of his young nephew, whom he reluctantly agrees to babysit.

To amuse the child, he recounts tales from his own youth, which are both romantic and tragic, while also being funny, and touching.

In the telling of these tales he is prompted to reassess the past and to come to terms with the events of a single day that has haunted him for twenty years, and all that led up to it.

A letter gives him a chance to rectify his biggest wrong and gain the peace he is seeking.

But is what he has sought for the last twenty years what he wants now? Is he the man he thought he was?

Set against a backdrop of a small Greek farming village, comedy and tragedy are present in equal measures.

Sara transports you to a land of sea and sun as she explores what it means to be human, and fallible. The book examines the nature of friendship, and how our choices and our perceptions of our place in society can define us.

Why I Wrote The Explosive Nature of Friendship - Sara Alexi

A pet hate of mine inspired me to write The Explosive Nature of friendship: the way we treat more mature people! People who have had the privilege to live a long time have so much knowledge and so much wisdom and yet in Western society we do not hold them in high esteem, and we do not seem to value the experiences they have accumulated through life.

We also tend to view them, even (or especially) when they are relations of ours as an inconvenience and we build homes for them and pay others to take care of them.

We say that modern psychotherapy is a new 'science', often dated to the opening of the first psychological clinic by Wilhelm Wundt in 1879.

We have always had philosophers and thinkers and human nature has always been a good topic for discourse. But the idea of therapy, and going to see someone and working through all your issues, would that have come about at all had the extended family remained intact?

I am not a historian but at a guess I imagine that the Industrial revolution (1760 - 1840) displaced a lot of the younger generation in Europe as they sought work in towns far from where they were born and where their families lived. I do not consider it a coincidence that peoples' interest in psychology flourished such a short time later.

These days very few teenage children would turn to their parents for help or advice, but Granny, dear, sweet, old, knowledgeable Granny will not only give you a bit of her advice but she will crack the odd joke about how silly your mother was when she was a girl too and you are not left feeling that you are the only one. Mum did it all before you and she made a mess of things too. What a relief that must be to hear.

But if granny is dumped in the Sunshine Home for the elderly what a waste of experience and wisdom, accumulated over a lifetime!


If you enjoyed 'The Pact' or 'The Story Teller' by Jodi Picoult, 'Necessary Lies' by Diane Chamberlain, 'The Thread' or 'The Island' by Victoria Hislop or 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry' by Rachel Joyce you'll love this book...