Overview

""A tenderly told story of a complex inheritance, displacement, and secrets."" Nadia Hashimi, internationally bestselling author of The Pearl That Broke Its Shell Athens, 1984. All Meta wants is to escape her tyrannical father and the future he demands of her. But when her dying grandmother, Metaxia, presses a mysterious heirloom into her hands-begging her to return it to the lost Greek village in Asia Minor from which she was violently expelled during World War I-Meta makes a promise she doesn't fully understand. Fleeing to America in a desperate bid for freedom, Meta must survive on her own after her father cuts her off-penniless, hungry, and clinging to her dream of becoming an artist. Yet the heirloom wrapped in her grandmother's handkerchief refuses to be forgotten. Years later, a shattering moment forces Meta to confront the life she has built-and the history she has tried to outrun. Her journey to Turkey becomes a pilgrimage across continents and across time, echoing Metaxia's own flight from violence decades earlier. As their parallel stories converge, Meta must finally face the truth: can we ever return to the places that made us-or only to the person we were meant to become? Sweeping, intimate, and deeply human, The Amalgam is the tale of two women bound by survival, exile, and the unbreakable pull of home.

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9783988322203

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Reviews

""The Amalgam is a tenderly told story of a complex inheritance, displacement, and secrets. Young Meta, buoyed by her ancestors and driven by her own fiery spirit, looks back to move forward, and her journey is an invitation for readers to indulge in the same."" Nadia Hashimi, internationally bestselling author of The Pearl That Broke Its Shell ""The Amalgam is a stunning novel, lush with detail and rich with history. It intertwines the personal, cultural, and political. It unspools the concept of home into a stretched thread, traversing space and time. Most of all, the novel is an insightful and touching exploration of how memory, across generations, merges the past with the present."" Zach Powers, author of The Migraine Diaries ""There are few things I love more than to discover fascinating, little-known, or lost history through the pages of a beautifully written historical fiction novel. I devoured Maria Karametou's The Amalgam and learned so much about the devastation of the Greek Communities in Asia Minor during WWI. With lyrical prose and lush historical detail, The Amalgam brings to light an important moment in history that should be learned from and never forgotten while reminding us of the brutal reality of the immigrant experience, then, and now. Highly recommended."" Yvette Manessis Corporon, internationally bestselling author of Daughter of Ruins ""A captivating book. The title captures it. This is a novel about identity and family connection amid great change. The change comes from personal decisions, particularly about emigration, and the larger history of the time. But change is managed by unexpected personal flexibility, which gives the book, and the main protagonist, a welcome complexity. I enjoyed the nuance throughout."" Dr. Peter N. Stearns, distinguished historian, author, and Professor Emeritus ""Maria Karametou's The Amalgam is an ambitious historical novel, told from the perspective of Meta, a Greek woman, and a poignant story filled with disappearances, escapes, and losses. With echoes of Téa Obreht's The Tiger's Wife, we are drawn into a world of intergenerational tenderness where love is a mystery worthy of attention."" Leeya Mehta, author of Extinction ""Where is home? Meta asks herself in The Amalgam, a sweeping novel by Maria Karametou. The longing to unearth her late grandmother's history is deep and she holds it close to her like the handkerchief Yaya once gave her in Greece, a scallop-edged hankie embroidered and tied up like a secret. Meta had promised Yaya she would someday return it to her Greek hometown village in Turkey, destroyed by war. Yet even if she did, would she have any answers, or would she be left with dust? If lives are vibrant tapestries, war can turn them into remnants, as is the case with The Amalgam. Rich with history, the story's transporting prose allows the plot to sing even in difficult times so that even a hidden jar of syrupy cherries is special and sumptuous. The Amalgam is a triumph."" Frances Park, author of Ahn Love and Blue Rice

Author Information

Maria Karametou, a first-generation immigrant to the US from Athens, Greece, is a visual artist whose mixed media works are exhibited internationally in numerous museum and gallery shows and featured in various collections. Her long career as a university professor includes, among others, a Fulbright Research Scholar award. Inspired by her experiences and history of migration, mobility, and displacement, her work, both visual and literary, relates to identity and our personal journey of self-discovery. She lives in the suburban Washington DC metropolitan area. The Amalgam is her first novel. Visit: mariakarametou.com

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