Nicholas Gage was born in Greece and emigrated to the United States ten years later. He was an investigative reporter and foreign correspondent for the New York Times when he wrote Eleni, working as their bureau chief in Athens. It was published in 1983 and went on to win the Royal Society for Literature's Heinemann Award for the best book of the year in 1984. Eleni became a bestseller all over the world and was made into a feature film.

A devoted and brilliant achievement. One of the rare books in which the power of art recreates the historical truth