Harriet Pringle is newly arrived in Athens. Having fled Nazi-occupied Rumania, she anxiously awaits news of her husband Guy, trapped in the spoilt city of Bucharest.

When the young couple are reunited, in the sunlight of a capital still at peace, they have little idea of the problems still to come. Greece is invaded by the Italians and work is scarce; hardly the best time for a marriage to flourish. Guy, as ever, is engrossed in his work and the problems of others, and when Harriet is diverted by a handsome young officer, their marriage seems doomed.

But when Greece is defeated, and as Europe disintegrates around them, Guy and Harriet are forced to find a new strength in a crumbling world of turmoil.

Olivia Manning, OBE, was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, spent much of her youth in Ireland and, as she puts it, had 'the usual Anglo-Irish sense of belonging nowhere'. The daughter of a naval officer, she produced her first novel,The Wind Changes,in 1937. She married just before the War and went abroad with her husband, R.D. Smith, a British Council lec-turer in Bucharest. Her experiences there formed the basis of the work which makes upThe Balkan Trilogy.As the Germans approached Athens, she and her husband evacuated to Egypt and ended up in charge of the Palestine Broadcasting Station. They returned to London in 1946 and lived there until her death in 1980.