Books by Panos Karnezis

When an overcrowded dinghy capsizes at sea, a doctor is among those refugees thrown overboard. In the ensuing panic, he saves one life and condemns another. The doctor and the boy he has saved - the only surviving witness to the crime - eventually reach a tiny Greek island where they are offered shelter by the owner of a small travelling circus, itself marooned in the off-season. Debt-ridden, the circus owner knows that his most valuable asset is an Asian elephant, far from her natural habitat but lovingly tended by the owner''s wife even as she mourns their 10-year old daughter. As the refugees await a long-deferred ferry to take them onto the next stage of their journey, the doctor is drawn to his host''s wife, all the while keeping his young companion, who loves him fervently, at arm''s length.

In a remote corner of a Latin American rainforest, Father Thomas, a Catholic priest, comes across a badly wounded soldier and takes him to his church in an Indian village.

Those whom God wishes to destroy he first makes mad... The convent of Our Lady of Mercy stands alone in an uninhabited part of the Spanish sierra.

Having found out that she is pregnant by a man he doesn't approve of, he secretly intends to persuade her to terminate the pregnancy: the family doctor stands by to perform the operation on the spot.

Set in Anatolia in 1922, this is the story of a retreating Greek brigade that has lost its way. It is pursued by a Turkish army that seeks to avenge three years of Greek occupation.

His characters are the people who live there - the priest, the barber, the whore, the doctor, the seamstress, the mayor - and the occasional animal: a centaur, a parrot that recites Homer, a horse called History.