At Twilight They Return

“Impossible to summarize such a prolific work: through four generations and more than six hundred pages of comings and goings in time, Zyranna Zateli builds the story of a family in which tragic tales and mysterious beliefs are profusely interlaced. An epic wind blows there, blending archaism with poetry. Although death is omnipresent, the tone is not macabre; no doubt because Zateli’s writing is so intense that it illuminates all things.”—Florence Noiville, Le Monde

“As years go by, this book will be compared to the masterpieces of world literature.”—Dinos Siotis, Diavazo

“Zateli’s world is a place where phantoms of evil lurk, or where indifference can raze lives to the ground, where appearance and essence mutually cancel each other out and cross-fertilise in alternation. A world where phenomena, their verbal reflections, and their existential corollaries trap men into a world of wisdom and doubt, dejection and perseverance, a flickering presence and a cyclical recurrence. This is a book that demands the leisure of time, the investment of empathy but also participation in the playfulness of an experimental, daring voice and storyteller. An ambitious novel about a prosperous, bucolic gens whose sole ambition is the ineluctable flux of life.”—Mika Provata-Carlone, Bookanista

“The superb translation by David Connolly of Zateli’s masterpiece At Twilight They Return weaves Greek folklore with magical realism; like a snake shedding successive skins, ten stories slither through history and fact into the wondrous and the marvelous. A book guaranteed to charm.”—George Syrimis, Yale University

“The stories that intertwine in Zateli’s novel are compelling, but what pulls you through this long book is not just the content but the style, the voice, the simple yet gorgeous fabric of her language.”—Karen Emmerich, Princeton University