‘The air resounds with a Babel’s Tower of languages’: why I wrote a novel based in Victoria Square, Athens

After my father’s will banned me and my siblings from his funeral, I wrote a novel about some brothers and sisters stealing their dad in his coffin. The emotions were drawn from my painful experiences, but I invented the characters and the tragi-comic narrative in *Stealing Dad*. Despite growing up in England, I’ve lived in and written about Athens for 25 years, and it came naturally to create several Greek characters. Alekos, a wild sculptor who dies in London, and his daughter Iris (one of seven dispersed half-siblings) lives off Victoria Square, one of Athens’ most fascinating corners. In the 1960s, Victoria Square was a fashionable neighborhood with the fanciest restaurants, shops, and theaters. Townhouses from the interwar period were being demolished, and Athenians were occupying new six-storey apartment blocks so fast that construction dust and drilling were the main problems. Today, elegant, marble-lined halls reveal traces of a vanished bourgeois life. After the 1980s, middle-class families left the polluted center for the suburbs, while students, migrants, and others seeking cheap rentals moved in. The 2008 global economic crisis devastated the area, leading to increased drug use and, around 2014, the arrival of refugees—Afghans and Syrians who settled in Victoria Square, turning it into an encampment with sleeping bags and tents around the bronze sculpture of Theseus Saving Hippodamia. Desperate, traumatized people lived on the street, queueing at soup kitchens catering to elderly and unemployed Greeks devastated by the crisis. Brought up in Victoria Square during its heyday, Maria-Liza Karageorgi runs the alluring Café des Poètes. Photographs of Greece’s poets, including CP Cavafy and Nobel laureates Giorgos Seferis and Odysseas Elytis, line the walls. Karageorgi allowed refugees to wash and use the toilets, later admitting only women and children. Today, the square balances multicultural life, with British foreign policy influences visible in newer arrivals. Victoria Square now hosts a mix of restaurants like Victoria, the Afghan-Persian restaurant, and Enjoy Just Felafel, owned by Lebanese-born George. Bangladeshi grocers stock African staples, and the area is scented by a Georgian bakery’s flatbreads. NGOs like the Melissa Network, run by Nadina Christopoulou, support refugees and migrants. Victoria Square’s longstanding theatrical traditions thrive, with cinemas like Cine Trianon and venues like the gay-friendly Diva Café. The area’s history is reflected in its evolving culture—from the 1960s’ glamour to the 2014 refugee influx and the revival of local businesses like Krouskas, a traditional restaurant since the 1970s. Despite challenges, Victoria Square remains a vibrant, multicultural hub, with locals and newcomers coexisting in a mix of history and modernity. The streets below the square have a rougher reputation, with graffiti reflecting local concerns. Fylis Street, lined with white door lights identifying its brothels, hosts a mix of squats and community-driven spaces. The area’s resilience is evident in its cultural and social resilience, from farmers’ markets to revived theaters and cinemas. Victoria Square’s transformation mirrors Athens’ broader evolution—from a once-prestigious neighborhood to a dynamic, multicultural space where history and change intersect.