In this magnificent book, which was published in France in 1953 and awarded the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, Margaret Liberaki deal with the chaos and absurdity of our times. Writing of the civil war which devastated Greece following World War II, she speaks of the "double which each man carries with him and with whom he wages an incessant warfare of his own.

The hero, Alexander, comes from an unusual family. He has two brothers, Phokion and Grigori, and a sister, Aglaia. But he also has half-brothers and a half-sister, his father having amused himself by giving the same names to both legitimate and illegitimate children, between the two families strange relationships emerge and the Other Alexander becomes a poetic drama that involves all existence.