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

It once housed the fanciest shops and restaurants in Greece’s capital city – then it crashed. Now the area is reborn as a vibrant, multicultural neighbourhoodAfter 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 abo...